The Conservative Party and the Creation of the Welfare State [1 ed.] 1527588629, 9781527588622

Table of contents :
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of Abbreviations
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

The Conservative Party and the Creation of the Welfare State

The Conservative Party and the Creation of the Welfare State By

Eric Caines

The Conservative Party and the Creation of the Welfare State By Eric Caines This book first published 2022 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2022 by Eric Caines All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-8862-9 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-8862-2

For my family, especially my wife Karen, and all those friends who have encouraged and supported me during the gestation of this book in the midst of a pandemic

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Abbreviations................................................................................ viii Chapter One ................................................................................................ 1 Introduction Chapter Two ............................................................................................... 6 The Emergence of Modern Welfarism Chapter Three ........................................................................................... 37 The Condition of Conservatism before the Second World War Chapter Four ............................................................................................. 75 Towards Reconstruction Chapter Five ........................................................................................... 115 The General Election of 1945 Chapter Six ............................................................................................. 151 1945–1951: Compromise to Consensus? Chapter Seven......................................................................................... 165 Post-war Conservatism Chapter Eight .......................................................................................... 201 Churchill Chapter Nine........................................................................................... 221 Conclusion Bibliography ........................................................................................... 231 Index ....................................................................................................... 241

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

ABCA

Army Bureau of Current Affairs

ACPPE

Advisory Committee on Policy and Political Education

BMA

British Medical Association

CPC

Conservative Political Centre

CRD

Conservative Research Department

EMS

Emergency Medical Service

IRA

Irish Republican Army

LSE

London School of Economics

PEP

Political and Economic Planning

PLP

Parliamentary Labour Party

PWPCC

Post-War Problems Central Committee

TUC

Trades Union Congress

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION

The principal aim of this book is to challenge a pervasive myth—that the Welfare State was created by the post-Second World War Labour Governments out of a clear blue sky (or should I rather say, a red sky). A central part of this myth is that the Welfare State constituted a damning rejection and outright reversal of the anti-social policies of the inter-war Conservative Governments. This book challenges those assumptions by tracking the growth of “welfarism” in the first half of the twentieth century. At the end of this period, in 1951, the Conservative Party returned to office. When they did so, they adopted social policies that marked the culmination of fifty years of developments in “welfarism.” In a wider sense, this book also examines two processes of political reconstruction during the same half-century. The more obvious of the two is the formal reconstruction planning undertaken by the two wartime Coalition Governments, whose approaches I compare and contrast to assess questions of impetus and effectiveness. To what extent did the plans formulated by those exercises meet the expectations of social betterment built up during the two conflicts? The other process which I scrutinise is what I regard as the reconstruction of post-Disraelian, late nineteenthcentury “Tory Democracy” as the “One-Nation” Conservatism of the 1940s and 1950s. From these two examinations there emerges, I believe, a clear view of the differences between the two principal parties concerning whether political change can best be achieved organically or through social engineering. Without pre-empting detailed discussions in later chapters, I set out broad definitions of the principal terms deployed here, as I use them throughout the book. “Tory Democracy” was a form of paternalism, flourishing for twenty years or so after the Third Reform Act of 1884. Those enjoying power, privilege, and landed wealth felt an obligation to take increasing heed of the living conditions of the poor and propertyless, and to make various provisions for their improvement. The 1884 Act was the most democratising of Britain’s three major nineteenth-century suffrage reforms, as it enabled more than 60 per cent of adult males to vote. What historians

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have found surprising, however, is that after the passage of the Act, almost nothing changed, in the sense that what occurred ran counter to leading theories of distribution and democracy. Conservatism not only survived, but sustained itself into the twentieth century—except for a thirty-four-month interregnum between 1892 and 1895. As Radicalism and Liberalism nearly disappeared from the stage of political power, the Conservative Party established itself as the dominant political force at the very moment of democratic expansion.1 “One-Nation” Conservatism, named as such after the publication of a book under that title by Iain Macleod and Angus Maude in 1950,2 described the protracted and somewhat reluctant adoption by the Conservative Party of the post-war political settlement—or, as some historians will have it, the acceptance of consensus politics. “One-Nation” Conservatism included what came to be known as “Butskellism”, a term coined by The Economist in 1954 to describe the common Keynesian features of the policies pursued by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, R. A. Butler, and his Labour predecessor, Hugh Gaitskell, in the early 1950s. These policies were intended to iron out the divergences between socialism and market capitalism. “One-Nation” Conservatism recaptured the balance achieved between economic and social policies by “Tory Democracy” more than half a century earlier. As “Tory Democracy” had done previously, “One-Nation Conservatism” came to dominate Conservative philosophy, particularly in the two decades leading to the emergence of Thatcherism in the 1970s. “Welfare State” is less easy to define. When I use the term with capital letters, I am specifically referring to the social reform programme introduced by the 1945 Labour Government. But when, more frequently, I use the term without its capital letters, I am referring to the system brought into being by the growth of state welfare provision during the whole of the half-century from the early 1900s onwards. Some writers have attempted to differentiate between the pre-First World War and the post-Second World War periods. They argue that during the former period, provision was made only for minimum standards of pension and insurance cover for limited sections of the poor, whereas during the later period, welfare was provided at what have been termed “optimum levels” for the whole population. Others, however, have identified a continuous process of development between the two periods, and dismissed the distinction between a limited 1

Daniel Ziblatt, Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 109–10. 2 Iain Macleod and Angus Maude, One Nation: A Tory Approach to Social Problems (London: Conservative Political Centre, 1950).

Introduction

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“social services state” and a fully-fledged “Welfare State” as spurious and misleading. I align myself with the continuity group, rather than the separatists, largely because my research has convinced me that insufficient attention has been paid to the significance of the measures brought forward by the 1924–29 Conservative Government, and principally by Neville Chamberlain. These measures anticipated later developments, and provided the starting point for the work done by William Beveridge in the 1940s. This book also examines two other immensely significant factors which have a bearing on the many aspects of social reform and post-war reconstruction. The first is the emergence, on a national scale, of a left-wing national party—the Labour Party—dedicated to challenging the Conservative Party’s cross-class appeal. This development occurred during a period of mass democratisation, and after the wartime split of the Liberal Party had consigned it to insignificance. The principal issue addressed in the book is whether, on the one hand, the welfare state emerged as the delayed consequence of the series of crises between 1914 and 1945 that raised an irresistible left-wing demand for an urgent reshaping of the social underpinnings of society; or whether, on the other, that it emerged as the foreseeable outcome of a programme of social reform pursued consistently by Conservative (or Conservative-led) Governments. The first proposition links the welfare state with the two World Wars, the Great Depression, and the emergence of Labour, while the second ties the welfare state to the social instincts of the Salisbury and Balfour Governments before 1906, and the legislative provisions of the 1906 Liberal Government. The second of the two factors related to social reform and post-war reconstruction is the relationship between war and social change. Some have argued that war, as the most destructive of all human activities, cannot contribute to social improvement—it can only delay it. From this viewpoint the First World War must be regarded as an interruption in the steady course of social and political improvement. In contrast, others see war as the supreme agent of change—or, as Leon Trotsky put it, the “locomotive of history.”3 In a similar vein, Karl Marx believed that “war passes supreme judgement on social systems that have outlived their vitality.”4 In other words, did the cataclysmic occurrences of the first part of the twentieth

3 Leon Trotsky, trans. Brian Pearce, How the Revolution Armed: The Military Writing and Speeches of Leon Trotsky, Vol. 1 (London: New Park Publications, 1979), 206. 4 Karl Marx, The Eastern Question. A Reprint of Letters Written 1853–1856 Dealing With the Events of the Crimean War (London: Swan Sonnenschein and Co., 1897), 576.

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century hinder the creation of a welfare state, or did those events bring it to fruition earlier than might otherwise have been expected? In his book British Social Policy 1914–1939, published in 1970, Bentley Gilbert wrote that: [W]ar [is] at once a catalyst for reform and an obstacle to change. On one hand…war demonstrate[s] the utility of government activity in the fields of social and economic control and hence of the feasibility of other experiments in this direction in peace.5

Conversely, it can be argued, the Lloyd George reforms preceded the First World War, whilst the Attlee reforms followed on from victory in 1945. True; but what is easily overlooked is the effect of the Boer War (1899– 1902) on the expectations of British society in the following years. (There were also other pressures, discussed later in this book, that shaped social expectations at the same time). As Richard Titmuss wrote in 1955—with clear reference, according to J.R. Hay, to the effect of the Boer War: [D]uring wars, it [is] necessary to ensure solidarity on national rather than class lines. This require[s] better social provision and a narrowing of inequalities in society. In addition some blueprint of a better society as a result of war [is] vital. Improved social conditions become part of the nation’s war aims.6

Other social historians have agreed with Titmuss about the important influence of the Boer War on the origins of the Liberal reforms. By implication, much of what he says can be applied to the situation following the First World War—although in the event, the promises of social improvements made during the war could not be kept, and led eventually to the downfall of the post-war, Lloyd George Coalition. Titmuss’s thesis holds fully, of course, for the post-Second World War period, which will receive detailed analysis in later chapters. One difference between the two post-war periods is that expectations for the future may have been built on the progress made in the welfare areas before the First World War; in contrast, after the Second World War, there was a universal longing to avoid a revival of pre-war social conditions.

5

Bentley B. Gilbert, British Social Policy 1914–1939 (London: B.T. Batsford Ltd., 1970), 1. 6 Richard M. Titmuss, Essays on the Welfare State (Bristol: Bristol University Policy Press, 2019); James R. Hay, The Origins of the Liberal Welfare Reforms 1906–1914 (London: Macmillan Press, 1975), 16–17.

Introduction

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There are further links between war and social change that I will consider in this book. There is, for instance, substantial evidence that whilst in peacetime people may want increased spending on social services, but object to raising the taxation necessary to pay for it, a major catastrophe such as war, which requires higher tax levels to be imposed, makes higher post-war taxation tolerable and allows governments to embark on costly welfare projects—at least for a time.7 There are parallels between the formal arrangements set up by both wartime Coalitions to provide structures for post-war reconstruction. Another factor (which might more properly be called a paradox, rather than a parallel) was that the December 1918 election witnessed an extension into peacetime of Lloyd George’s Coalition Government, whereas by the time of the July 1945 election, Winston Churchill had been forced to abandon his plans to continue his wartime Coalition. Finally, the figures of William Beveridge and Winston Churchill dominate both periods. If nominations were being sought for the two most dominant figures of the first half of the twentieth century, their names would surely be advanced. Although their fundamental interests varied widely and their relationship was marked by personal antipathy, their joint efforts during both periods in pursuit of social amelioration simply cannot be overlooked.

7 Alan T. Peacock and Jack V. Wiseman, The Growth of Public Expenditure in the United Kingdom (London: George Allen and Unwin, 2nd revised edition, 1967).

CHAPTER TWO THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN WELFARISM

The origins of the welfare state as we know it today are, arguably, to be found in the Liberal Party’s legislative initiatives after their resounding 1906 election victory—particularly in David Lloyd George’s famous 1909 People’s Budget, which provided finance for the Government’s overall social welfare package. In 1909, Lloyd George had denounced the “selfish and stupid monopoly of land ownership”; and the Budget, which Lloyd George described as a “war budget” because it would “wage implacable warfare against poverty and squalidness”, stunned Parliament when it was presented, and brought howls of protest from those it would most affect, particularly landowners. Yet at a time when the House of Lords’ rejection of Liberal legislative proposals seemed to be “wearing the government down”, the Budget campaign has been seen as a “masterpiece of political strategy”, since it gave Lloyd George the opportunity he sought for the fight on the question of inherited property, and especially property in land.8 The Conservatives had, conversely, made it clear that they would use their great majority in the House of Lords to frustrate the Liberal Party’s social legislation. In the three years before the Budget, they had mutilated Augustine Birrell’s Education Bill beyond repair, on the grounds that it disadvantaged Church of England schools, and they had also rejected a Plural Voting Bill designed to prevent certain property-holders voting in more than one place. Its approach was so knee-jerk that the House of Lords—the so-called “watch-dog of the Constitution”—had become known as “Mr. Balfour’s poodle.” It was in this frame of mind that the Lords obligingly fell into the trap presented by the 1909 Budget, and found their veto transformed into a delaying power by the Parliament Act of 1911.9 8

Maurice Bruce, The Coming of the Welfare State, (London: B.T. Batsford Ltd., 1961), 181. 9 The course of events leading up to the 1911 Parliament Act was as follows. When the House of Lords rejected the People’s Budget, Asquith in January 1910 called a general election, the result of which left him dependent upon the support of the Irish and Labour Parties. But Irish support was only available in exchange for Irish Home

The Emergence of Modern Welfarism

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However, not only was the Budget seen by its opponents as having more than a taint of socialism about it, it was also a clear rejection of the tariff reformers’ belief that tariffs on imports could raise the necessary money to meet the staggering cost of the Government’s vast improvements in social welfare and public works, along with the cost of the new Dreadnought battleships that had been commissioned. The Government’s reforming intentions had been made clear even before the Budget. In 1908, the Government had obtained Parliamentary approval for an Old-Age Pensions Act. In the same year, preparatory work had started on the creation of a system of Labour Exchanges, with the necessary legislation carried in the summer of 1909. The Budget itself set out a principle with considerable future significance by introducing child allowances for employees on small incomes. Looking ahead, it also signalled the introduction of a system of unemployment insurance which was drafted in 1910, and became law as Part I of the National Insurance Act of 1911. Part II of the Act introduced health insurance for all low-paid workers aged between sixteen and seventy.10 In framing their programme Rule, which had been a non-issue since 1906. The answer was seen to lie in changing the balance of political allegiance in the Lords, but Asquith was unable to persuade Edward VII to use the royal prerogative to create enough new peers to overturn the existing Conservative majority in the Upper House. The King died in May 1910, and during the period of mourning which followed, efforts were made to negotiate a constitutional settlement agreeable to all parties. Lloyd George even tried to make a political deal via the formation of a national government, but Balfour was unable to accept Home Rule as part of an agreed package. Asquith therefore pressured the new King, George V, to agree to create as many new peers as were necessary to override the House of Lords, which he agreed to do but only after another general election had confirmed support for the Liberal Party. As it happened, the result of the December 1910 election almost replicated that of the January election, and left the Irish Nationalist Party still holding the whip hand. The King kept his word, the Parliament Bill became law, the Budget was then passed by both Houses, and the stage was set for the passage of a new Home Rule Bill. 10 (a) The Old-Age Pension Act 1908. The Act’s provisions were quite modest, with a maximum payment of five shillings a week. They were subject to means-testing and payable only to people over 70, earning less than £31.10 a year. The payment of pensions had seemed at the time the only effective way of distancing the elderly from dependence on the Poor Law (see later in this chapter). (b) The Labour Exchanges Act 1909. The Act was devised by Winston Churchill after his appointment as President of the Board of Trade in 1908, in collaboration with W.H. (later Sir William) Beveridge, who was subsequently made Director of the new service with responsibility for establishing it nationwide. In his book Unemployment: A Problem of Industry (London: Longmans, Green, and Co.,1909), Beveridge examined the problem of low wages and found that the unemployed were, in most cases, the

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of reforms, the Liberals had been conscious of the need to disrupt the labour market as little as possible, for fear of offending economists and industrialists and of alienating their lower middle-class support by introducing unacceptably expensive schemes. Yet the Liberals also hoped that their schemes would, to some degree or other, divert the attention of the working class from more radical socialist proposals. Given that the additional expenditure to fund all these social and other commitments required substantial tax increases, the 1909 Budget introduced important changes to the graduated income tax system by distinguishing between “earned” and “unearned” income, as well as by extending the supertax demands on upper income levels. “Land value duties”, which required the payment of a levy on the unearned increment produced when land was sold or leased, were also introduced. As we have already seen, in their fury at this attack on the landed interest, the Conservatives used their majority in the House of Lords to defeat the Budget, but the Liberal victory which followed the second general election in 1910 enabled the passage of legislation to drastically curtail the Lords’ veto powers. Despite continuing opposition, therefore, the Budget was eventually carried and provided the springboard for the development of the full Liberal reform programme. The Liberal Government’s initiatives have generally been designated as “modern” or “progressive”, or increasingly as the “New Liberalism”, to casually unemployed. The Labour Exchanges were renamed Employment Exchanges in 1916 and passed to the Ministry of Labour on its establishment in that year. (c) Unemployment insurance, introduced in Part II of the National Insurance Act of 1911, involved contributions from workers, their employers, and the state. The scheme restricted the payment of insurance of seven shillings a week, for up to fifteen weeks a year, to a limited number of trades—principally building and engineering, which gave it a somewhat experimental feel. Payments became due only after a search by claimants for suitable work through a Labour Exchange had proved unsuccessful. The scheme was actuarially sound, unlike the post-war “dole” system for which its machinery was utilised. It assumed an average unemployment rate among eligible workers of 8.46 per cent. (d) Part I of the 1911 National Insurance Act introduced health insurance for all workers between sixteen and seventy and earning less than £160 per year. The scheme was funded by contributions payable by workers, both male and female, and by the state. Insured workers were entitled to claim for up to twenty-six weeks, as well as treatment from a doctor on a list of government-approved practitioners who would be paid a set fee for the service provided. An allowance could also be claimed—by men—to cover the cost of an attendant for their wives during childbirth. The system was opposed by the British Medical Association as being in restraint of trade, as well as by Friendly Societies and private insurance companies.

The Emergence of Modern Welfarism

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distinguish them from the older libertarian or anti-statist Liberalism and the widely-held view that the Labour movement was the real force behind progressive radicalism.11 On this latter point, however, Michael Freeden suggests that many, even today, are still disposed to believe that the areas into which this new thinking supposedly transported Liberalism were so close to Socialist thought as to render a clear distinction impossible. Freeden’s belief, though, is that the New Liberalism was: emphatically liberal. Its configuration of core convictions followed already established patterns, while placing slightly different stress on the relative weight of each of them within the core. The new liberals constituted an explicit social and cultural reaction to the glaring evils of the industrial revolution…and underlined the pressing need to accommodate the ascendant working class in terms of an economic redistribution commensurate with its newly acquired political power.12

This latter point was bolstered by the fact that Labour was concentrating increasingly on narrow, non-ideological, basic, life-enhancing, trade union concerns.13 “New Liberalism” was intended to be viewed as humanely different from the provisions of the Poor Law system. When he crossed the floor of the Commons in 1904 to join the ranks of the Liberal Party, Winston Churchill said that he hoped to see his new Party’s policy based on the cause of “the left-out millions”. The essence of New Liberalism was not so much that the old stress on individual self-help and freedom of choice and action was discarded, as that it was overlaid or overtaken by new policy emphases 11 Being “progressive” has generally been taken to mean that welfare reforms have resulted from a deep appreciation of social problems, fostering a consequential altruistic desire on the part of governments to help the weaker members of the community. Titmuss, however, believed that welfare provision could also be used as a form of social control or as an instrument to stimulate economic growth, in which respects, by benefiting a minority it could indirectly promote greater inequality. Richard M. Titmuss, “Poverty Versus Inequality,” in Poverty, eds. Jack L. Roach and Janet L. Roach (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972), 321; Rimlinger (quoted by Hay) agrees, pointing out, for example, that “Health services would ensure that the worker was returned to the labour force as soon as possible after illness […] unemployment benefits would help to maintain levels of consumption during an economic depression.” See James R. Hay, Origins of the Liberal Welfare Reforms, 1906–14 (London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1977), 16–17. 12 Michael Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 194. 13 William H. Greenleaf, The British Political Tradition, Vol II. The Ideological Inheritance (London: Methuen, 1983), 155–59.

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and collectivist pressures designed to make it more attuned to the conditions and problems of the day. Deserving mention among the early advocates of New Liberalism are Charles Masterman and Herbert Samuel. In Masterman’s edited volume, The Heart of The Empire, which appeared in 1901, he stressed the need for a real and effective social policy if the appeal of Liberalism was to be sustained. He continued to urge a progressive social policy after entering Parliament in 1906, and was critical of the absence of sufficiently strong reform proposals in the programme of the CampbellBannerman Government. Later, as a junior Home Department Minister, he was closely involved in the formulation of Lloyd George’s Health Insurance schemes, and of measures to extend state control over working conditions in mines and shops. He believed that the Liberal Party, while not being prepared to contemplate the adoption of a Socialist state, should be open to arguments in favour of industrial control and rationalisation, including the nationalisation of monopolies, and the extension of the democratic ideal from the political into the economic field. Sadly, he died prematurely in 1927. Herbert Samuel had a much more prominent (and much longer) career than Masterman, entering the Liberal Cabinet in 1909 and leading the Party in the early 1930s. His defence of New Liberalism was much more high-flown than Masterman’s; yet it was no less powerful over the longer term, and was probably more effective. He wrote widely on philosophy, and in 1902 he asserted the primacy of moral law as the basis for any consideration of political matters which, as he saw it, laid a duty on the state to secure for all its members the fullest opportunity to lead the best possible life. He rejected the arguments of the older school of Liberals that the State was incompetent and that social reforms weakened self-reliance. He believed that circumstances had changed and that State action, as promoted by New Liberalism, was having beneficial effects, and adding to the sum total of human happiness.14 Closely related to New Liberalism was a brand of Liberalism known as Liberal Imperialism. This stressed the core values of the New Liberalism by promoting a progressive policy on social matters more highly than anything else. At the same time, unlike the majority of New Liberals, Liberal Imperialists championed the Empire, although not with a view to British world domination—rather, its intention was to develop mutually beneficial economic co-operation. They also backed a programme of “National Efficiency”, as did some Conservatives, seeking a more rationally organised and more scientific State. They regarded Earl Rosebery as their 14

Greenleaf, British Political Tradition, Vol II, 155–59.

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leader, and among their advocates were the likes of Richard Haldane and Edward Grey. (In 1915, Haldane was ejected from the Liberal Government as a German sympathiser, but later became Lord Chancellor in the 1924 Labour Government. Grey, later Earl Grey, was the Liberal Foreign Secretary at the outbreak of the First World War.)15 Another important factor during the pre-First World War period was the influence brought to bear by the Fabian Society which, since its foundation in 1884, had been active in the development and furthering of left-wing public policies. In the period between 1900 and 1914, legislation enacted by “Conservative and Liberal Parties, in the name of ‘Social Welfare’, national efficiency, or industrial rationalisation”, represented a distinct and accelerating trend towards the Fabian Collectivist State.16 As [George Bernard] Shaw later put it, “the Fabian policy was to support and take advantage of every legislative step towards Collectivism, no matter what quarter it came from.”17 And “it was the New Liberals, led by Lloyd George, who were in the vanguard of this new movement, while the Old [Asquithian] Liberals, loyal to the Party’s Gladstonian roots, were left to lament the withering of the Victorian liberal ideological tradition.”18 The Poor Law had come to be widely regarded as anti-progressive. Progressive historians have treated the residue of the Poor Law as something akin to a pathological anachronism in twentieth-century British social policy. Writers such as José Harris, however, contend that there is greater continuity between the welfare state and the Poor Law than is sometimes thought.19 In this respect, I believe an understanding of the principles which informed the Poor Law system, and how it was administered, can contribute to a realistic appreciation of the groundbreaking nature of the Liberal agenda. The Poor Law, as it existed before the 1906 election, had been introduced by the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. This was a response to the growing realisation of the conditions which industrial development was creating, and the social problems arising from the uncontrolled growth 15

John Campbell, Haldane: The Forgotten Statesman Who Shaped Modern Britain (London: Hurst and Company, 2020), 149. 16 Rachel S. Turner, Neo-Liberal Ideology. History, Concepts, Policies (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), 56. 17 Greenleaf, British Political Tradition Vol II, 380. 18 Richard Cockett, Thinking the Unthinkable: Think-Tanks and the Economic Counter-Revolution, 1931–1983 (London: HarperCollins, 1995), 15. 19 José Harris, “Enterprise and the Welfare State: A Comparative Perspective” in Britain Since 1945, eds. Terence R. Gourvish and Alan O’Day (Macmillan, London, 1991), 56.

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of major centres of population. Since the 1830s, following an earlier Royal Commission report, the Poor Law had been used as a deterrent intended to cut costs by driving away all but the most obvious cases of need. Those whom the Poor Law was meant to help fell into three groups: the “impotent poor”, who, because they could not support themselves in old age or because they were sick, were offered places in poorhouses or almshouses; the “ablebodied poor”, such as children, who for whatever reason were unable to work and were thus given an opportunity to learn a trade; and the “idle poor”, who merited punishment of some sort and who were generally sent to “houses of correction” where they were employed on menial but demanding jobs, such as picking ropes apart or breaking stones. Relief came in two forms—“outdoor” and “indoor” relief. “Outdoor” relief, given as cash allowances or as goods or services, was for those in work but who could not make ends meet because they had dependants. “Indoor” relief was for those in the categories described above who were unable to support themselves at all. Administration of the system was the responsibility of the local authorities. The view of the Royal Commission, upon whose recommendations the legislation had been based, was that the way in which it had been managed in ever more difficult circumstances had resulted in undue generosity to people—usually the “lowest class of labourers”—who were content, once they had received the help available, to enjoy a standard of living which, however harsh, was better than that which could be provided by any paid work they might find. The result was that by the beginning of the twentieth century, more than half of all expenditure on public social services was that disbursed by local authorities. In this respect, there was great unevenness, with wealthy suburban areas with limited social needs being relatively lightly rated, while poorer central areas of population with considerable social deprivation struggled to meet the financial demands made on them. This left the new Liberal Government with a dilemma. It could reconstruct the whole system of local authority financing by providing revenues which would iron out the unevenness, or it could introduce new national services. Neither prospect was appealing in terms of the likely expenditure required. One of the earliest initiatives of the CampbellBannerman Government, therefore, recognising that radical changes in popular and official attitudes towards social welfare had made the proposals of the 1834 Royal Commission almost completely out of date, was to set up a new Royal Commission in 1905 to re-examine whether the Poor Law system was still an appropriate and useful measure for tackling social hardship. The Commission produced two reports in 1909. Both reports

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regarded “poor relief” as an out-of-date concept; but whilst the “Minority Report” wanted the system abolished in its entirety and its work redistributed, the “Majority Report” opted for a much less drastic approach. The tone of the “Minority Report” reflected the thinking of Beatrice Webb, who believed that the mere keeping of people from destitution—in short, from starvation—did not accord with modern ideas of social responsibility. The “Majority Report” argued that poverty was a moral issue, and would only be solved if individuals had sufficient motivation to help themselves. The State should keep its distance and the Government should drop any plans it might have to introduce insurance schemes that offered people anything like pensions and unemployment benefits. Before any acceptable programme of change could be agreed, however, war intervened and nothing happened until 1929, by which time Poor Law reformulation had been overtaken by subsequent legislative developments.20 The Conservative approach to social reform both before and after the election of the Liberal Government was tied to the need for tariff reform. It was widely recognised by the Party that the main interest of the working class was material improvement. Yet how was this to be provided? Employment was seen as the economic taproot of social reform, and Joseph Chamberlain repeatedly stressed the employment advantages of protective tariffs. At the beginning of the century, the Conservatives were drifting out of popularity, their prestige damaged as the Boer War dragged on. Something had to be done to restore the Party’s fortunes, and Chamberlain decided to show how the Empire could be made into a paying proposition. To achieve this, he proposed that a tariff wall should be built around England “for the sole purpose of knocking holes in it through which Imperial goods might pass” tariff-free.21As Chamberlain said in a speech in the Albert Hall on 7 July 1905: [T]he question of employment is at the root of all the social reforms of our time…There is no dole from the State. There is no relief of taxation. There is no legislation which the wit of man can devise, no artificial combination to raise the rate of wages, which will weigh for one moment in the balance against a policy which would give to our people some substantial increase in the demand for their labour.22 20

Chris Renwick, Bread for All: The Origins of the Welfare State (London: Penguin Books, 2018), 53–57. 21 George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England (London: Serif, 2012), 24. 22 Quoted in Ewen H.H. Green, The Crisis of Conservatism. The Politics, Economics, and Ideology of the British Conservative Party, 1880–1914 (London: Routledge, 1996), 243.

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This sentiment was echoed by Balfour, who told the electors of Stockport in 1910 that “Tariff Reform will undoubtedly do great things for the unemployed.”23 Alfred Milner modified the case a little—but only a little—when he argued that there were various means of dealing with Britain’s social difficulties, either by labour registries or by legislating against “sweating.” All such measures, however, though they minimised the evils, did not go to the heart of them; at the root of them all lay the problem of unemployment. Tariff reformers saw the Liberals’ social reforms as an impractical foundation for any scheme designed to alleviate problems without touching the underlying causes. They were “a quack remedy… an anodyne which would speedily paralyse the patient.”24 Most Conservatives saw tariff reform as “a policy of imperial preference, industrial protection and as a means of gathering revenue for unspecified social reforms…in response to the Liberal Government’s labour and social policies.”25 There were many Conservatives, however, who took a dim view of Chamberlain’s preaching. If free trade was given up, it would undercut an essential feature of “the Victorian economic consensus, with no guarantee whatsoever of success in securing the working-class vote as a result.”26 Indeed, it has been claimed that the differences on the issue which dominated the Conservative approach to the 1906 election were the principal cause of the Liberal landslide. And, as I have already noted, in their despair the Conservatives turned to the House of Lords as their means of running the country: “It was with these hereditary allies that Mr Balfour and his colleagues proposed to harry the vast majority opposed to them.”27 The severe depression which occurred between late 1907 and mid1909 appeared to justify the claim that the Liberal social reforms only addressed symptoms, and not causes, of the hardship arising from unemployment. The depression also led to a surprising Conservative gain in

23

William E. Dowding, The Tariff Reform Mirage (London: Methuen, 1913), 255. Green, Crisis, 246. 25 Green, Crisis, 4. See also Keith W.W. Aikin, The Last Years of Liberal England 1900–1914 (London: Randall, Hunt and Aikin, 1972), 40–41: “The Tariff Reform issue had its immediate origins in 1902, when the Boer War had caused a deficit for which [Chancellor] Hicks Beach found additional revenue by imposing a “registration” duty of one shilling on imported corn and flour, thus reviving a tax that had been abolished in 1869. This duty had only a symbolic importance…[As we have seen], the political repercussions were far-reaching and were to dominate British politics until the 1906 election.” 26 David Willetts and Richard Forsdyke, After the Landslide: Learning the Lessons of 1906 and 1945, Centre for Policy Studies (September 1999): 28. 27 Dangerfield, The Strange Death, 25. 24

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a by-election in Mid-Devon, in January 1908. Before then, however— indeed, even before the 1906 election—the Conservative Party had begun to consider how to employ the revenues raised by tariffs, focusing on old age pensions which, as an issue, had a long pedigree. The scheme brought forward in May 1904 proposed that a person who had maintained himself as a good citizen, in what might be called the working years of his life, would be entitled to a pension of not less than 5 shillings and not more than 7 shillings per week. This Conservative proposal would have been even more generous, if enacted, than the Liberal Government’s 1908 measure. Philosophically, it would have made pension entitlement a “right” rather than a charitable acknowledgement of failure, or an inability to provide for one’s old age. In 1906 and 1907, Austen Chamberlain pressed the need for pension legislation on several occasions, although it has been suggested that he did this defensively, when it became clear that the Government intended to bring forward their own plans. Perhaps as a matter of tactics, the Conservatives warmly welcomed the Government’s measure, even if there was some unsuccessful pressure to have pensions funded by a contributory scheme rather than by the state, the argument being that such a system would enable the payment of larger pensions. Similarly, in the area of domestic policy concerned with the socalled “labour question”, the Conservative idea that labour registries would reduce the problems associated with casual labour was, in a sense, a forerunner of the Churchill/Beveridge system of Labour Exchanges introduced in 1909. Despite differences as to how the Exchanges might be funded, with the Tories seeing it as another argument for tariff reform, when the Liberal scheme was introduced, it was regarded as politically noncontroversial. Indeed, Bonar Law told the Commons that, “the establishment of Labour Exchanges is, I think, one on which certainly everybody is pretty well agreed.”28 These points indicate that in order to avoid attracting a negative image in the field of domestic policy, and recognising the need to relate to the “mass electorate”, the Conservative Party showed itself increasingly receptive between 1903 and 1910 to the idea of developing a distinctive set of social reform policies—even though this produced much debate, inter alia, about the relationship between the “State and the Individual.” In the words of the Conservative weekly The Outlook, the question was “Does the State exist by and for the Citizen, or does the Citizen exist by and for the State?”29 Social provision was still seen by many Conservatives as a 28 29

Hansard, Parl. Deb. 16 June 1909, 5th ser., vol. 6, col. 1045. “The New Leaf”, The Outlook, 2 January 1909, quoted in Green, Crisis, 260.

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manifestation of socialism, a feeling reinforced by recurring rumours that the Liberals were planning to co-operate with the Labour Party at the next election. It was also charged that the Government was, in effect, carrying out a social revolution without a mandate, its measures not having been broached in the Party’s 1906 election manifesto and not therefore having been approved by voters. Furthermore, it would have been surprising if such apparent objections of principle had not been reinforced by resentment at the increase in the financial liabilities being imposed on the well-off. Many, however, engaged positively with the Collectivist versus Individualist debate, and started to tip the balance of opinion within the Party in favour of the former, which involved shaping a new class appeal—an appeal that was becoming evident by the time of the 1910 elections.30 The crop of new Conservative MPs in 1910 was less well disposed to the ongoing avoidance of domestic matters, the result of this state of affairs being the establishment of the Unionist Social Reform Committee. In some ways, the Committee anticipated the Conservative Research Department, which was established almost 20 years later. The Unionist Social Reform Committee possessed no real endorsement, and both Bonar Law and Balfour remained aloof from it.31 Bonar Law also distanced himself from Lloyd George’s national insurance scheme in 1911. To the dismay of many in his Party, however, he did not seize the opportunity to lay the foundations for a distinctive Conservative alternative scheme based on voluntary provision rather than compulsory state provision. The attitudinal changes finding their expression in both main parties at the beginning of the century were in fact detectable ever since the franchise extension of 1885 introduced a more socially conscious cadre of MPs into Parliament. Although it took twenty years for this shift in social awareness to come to full fruition in the Liberal Government’s post-1906 reform programme, the Conservative Unemployed Workmen’s Act of 1903 (renewed by the Liberal Party in 1905) was an indicator of what lay ahead. The Act still reflected the principle that unemployment was better tackled by the provision of work rather than by financial assistance, and called for the establishment of Distress Committees by local authorities to give grants to businesses as a means of increasing employment opportunities. One of its wider aims was to reduce dependency on the Poor Law. At the same time, as a further recognition of the incidence and causes of social disadvantage, both the growing Labour movement and the Trades Union Congress 30 31

See Green, Crisis, Chapter 10. Willetts and Forsdyke, After the Landslide, 28.

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produced extensive reform programmes which included free education, a comprehensive health service, old age pensions, measures to deal with unemployment, and the abolition of the Poor Law. What they were looking for was the establishment of an “optimum” rather than the “minimum” standard of living, favoured by Sidney Webb, Asquith and others. Asquith put the matter powerfully when he asked: What is the use of talking about Empire if here, at its very centre, there is always to be found a mass of people stunted in education, a prey of intemperance, huddled and congested beyond the possibility of realising in any true sense either social or domestic life?32

Achievement of an “optimum” standard of living was also the core idea of the “National Efficiency movement” which likewise emerged in the early years of the 1900s. Anxiety about the physical, moral, and military strength of the nation had been raised by revelations about the health of army recruits during the Boer War, as well as by the studies of social impoverishment undertaken by Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree.33 While the movement helped to give social reform the status of a respectable political issue, its practical influence on politics was reduced when its energies were dissipated by the pursuit of such fantasies as the realignment of politics to create a separate party, to be led by the former Liberal Prime Minister Lord Rosebery, dedicated to its ideas. By backing Rosebery against Campbell-Bannerman, the Webbs significantly reduced their chances of directly influencing the first Liberal administration.34 Despite this, the idea of national efficiency became part of the political language of the time. Indeed, there were businessmen both within the Liberal Party, as well as outside its membership, who supported social welfare measures as likely to contribute to the efficiency of the workers, and not simply to improve the quality of their lives. In a broader historical sense, two major political consequences of the Liberal programme adopted after 1906 can be identified. The first is that 32

Hay, Origins, 31. The accurate statistical knowledge contained in the surveys conducted by Booth, Rowntree, and others went some way to undermining the view, held by many, that personal character deficiencies were the primary cause of poverty. 34 Campbell-Bannerman, though unable to deny that some 30 per cent of the population were living in poverty, insisted that there was no crisis. Up until the eve of the 1906 election, he sought to avoid committing the Liberal Party, of which he was the leader, to any measures to deal with unemployment, or even old age pensions—the need for which had been under discussion since the late 1880s. See Hay, Origins, 33. 33

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the programme, with its ever-expanding financial demands, showed that the Liberal Government—despite including in its ranks long-standing opponents of collectivism—had decisively “transcended the economic and social creed of Gladstone.”35 Indeed, by focusing its tax demands on landholding, the “People’s Budget” had associated the Treasury with the growing urban wealth of the country and, moreover, appealed to free traders by providing an attractive Liberal alternative to the Conservative policy of tariff reform. Though the implementation of the Budget was stalled by its rejection in the House of Lords (the first time such an extreme action had been taken for over two hundred years), it was passed after a second general election in 1910 in which Lloyd George campaigned on the issue of “the peers versus the people.” When the National Insurance Bill was brought before Parliament in 1911, Lloyd George was encouraged to adopt what was, in effect, a measure of redistributing income by compulsion, for both its Health and Insurance schemes. This was achieved by providing for the contributions to be divided between employees (prospective beneficiaries), employers, and the State. As such, this expressed his clear desire to establish a welfare state on collectivist lines—by focusing not simply on the confiscation of wealth, but on creating a unified society. It could thus be argued that any expenditure that raised the material conditions of the poor was in the interests of the wealthy, who should therefore bear their fair share of the costs. “Fairness”, not unexpectedly, was an issue that rumbled on for some time. The second consequence of the Liberal Party’s programme was that the Party had, in effect, doomed itself, and made inevitable its future “replacement by the Labour Party as the major spokesman for the Left.”36 In the words of George Dangerfield, “[w]ith the election of fifty-three Labour representatives, the death of Liberalism was pronounced: it was no longer the Left.”37 Beatrice Webb, however, thought differently. As she wrote in 1910: The big thing that has happened in the last two years is that Lloyd George and Winston Churchill have taken the limelight not merely from their own colleagues but from the Labour Party. And, if we get a Liberal majority and payment of members, we shall have any number of young Fabians rushing

35 Kenneth O. Morgan, The Age of Lloyd George: The Liberal Party and British Politics, 1890–1929 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1971), 46. 36 Morgan, Lloyd George, 38 and 40. 37 Dangerfield, The Strange Death, 24.

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from Parliament fully equipped for the fray—better than the Labour men— and enrolling themselves behind the two Radical leaders.38

There matters stood, with the continuing implementation and consolidation of the Liberal reforms after the 1910 elections, up to the point where the country was drawn into a war which was to last for more than four years. During this time there was a plethora of challenges assailing the Government, including domestic problems largely arising from strikes that were galvanised by a growing socialist pacifism with revolutionary overtones. Nevertheless, it was felt both important and necessary to create a national agency for post-war planning, and thus a Reconstruction Committee was established. This body was tasked to develop policies which, inter alia, might go some way after the war towards healing the dangerous class divisions which were becoming only too obvious and threatening as the existential struggle continued.39 The Committee, approved by the War Cabinet in March 1917, replaced an ineffective Committee appointed a year earlier. This is not to say that before it evolved into a Ministry of Reconstruction later in the year, the new Committee made much of a mark; the same criticism, it has to be said, was also later levelled at the Ministry itself. Yet these initiatives symbolised Lloyd George’s belief that reforms would have to be undertaken in the immediate post-war period before, as he put it in a speech in early March 1917, there was any “hankering” on the part of the working class to re-embrace pre-war conditions. Though his conviction on this score cannot be doubted—he insisted whenever the opportunity arose that he had “always stood during the whole of [his] life for the under-dog”—suspicions were voiced that he was politically motivated. In particularly, it was alleged that he was moving Christopher Addison to become Minister of Reconstruction in order to make room for Churchill at the Ministry of Munitions, the post of which Addison was the somewhat undistinguished incumbent. Churchill had been in political limbo since the Gallipoli disaster in the autumn of 1915, and his new appointment angered Addison and also caused discontent among Tory MPs, who had made Churchill’s removal from the Admiralty in 1915 a precondition of the Party’s preparedness to serve in the Asquith Coalition. It was not until August 1918, after the failure of the German spring offensive, that Lloyd George was able to turn his mind to the need to plan for a much-delayed general election. If victorious, he could then continue to improve the condition of the people by carrying further the raft of pre-war 38 39

Morgan, Lloyd George, 154. Gilbert, British Social Policy, 6.

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policies which he had masterminded, and supplementing them with whatever new ideas emerged from the deliberations of the Reconstruction Committee. As events transpired, the opportunity to further this aspiration fell to the “Coupon” Coalition formed in January 1919. The War Cabinet continued to function until December, while Lloyd George was absent at the Paris Peace Conference, from which he returned as a hero. The Labour Party had fought the election as an avowed Opposition, and the few who remained in the newly-elected Coalition resigned from the Party. Furthermore, in order to outflank disenchanted Asquithian Liberals, those Labour candidates who were given the “coupon”, ensuring that they would not be opposed by Lloyd George Liberals, were required to give a pledge that they would support the Coalition. This was an attempt— not entirely successful as it turned out—to ensure that a Coalition Government would not have too great a preponderance of Conservative members. At the final count, however, there were 335 Conservative Coalitionists, 133 Coalition Liberals, 28 Asquithian Liberals, and 63 Labour MPs. The Asquithian Liberals who had not received the coupon formed part of the Opposition, leaving open the possibility that they might enter into a compact with the Labour Party. The key winners were clearly the Conservatives. They supported Lloyd George as the man who had “won” the war, who was representing the country in the peace talks and who, it has been claimed, was at the time arguably the most powerful figure in British public life since Oliver Cromwell. It made sense too, in political terms, for the Conservatives to support the most popular man in the country in order to keep the Liberals divided; but it did not augur well for continuing progressive reform.40 As might be imagined, in the absence of the cohesive and powerful presence of the Prime Minister immediately after the war, there was an initial unreality about the state of politics. Everyone seemed to be conducting a holding operation until the peace talks were concluded. Yet there was also a growing mood of concern amongst many Liberal 40

The December 1918 general election was the first parliamentary election in which women were allowed to vote. Women over 30, who resided in the constituency or occupied land or property with a rateable value above £5, or whose husbands did, had been given the right to vote by the Representation of the People Act passed in November 1918. Those qualifying to vote comprised 39.64% of the electorate. A number of women stood for election but only one, Constance Markievicz, was elected. She, however, as a member of Sinn Fein, chose to sit in the Irish Dail rather than the House of Commons. The first woman MP to sit in the Commons was Nancy Astor who was elected in December 1919. The significance of the women’s vote on the outcome of subsequent elections is dealt with in the next chapter.

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Coalitionists who, though anxious to cling onto the national ideal enshrined in the Coalition formula, found it difficult to see how, with such a large Conservative representation, they could be Coalition Liberals and Nationalists at the same time. In practice, the two parties worked in parallel rather than in unison, with both treasuring their independence. The Coalition Liberals became even more disconcerted when in October Lloyd George, albeit reluctantly, disbanded the War Cabinet. He then restored the pre-war Cabinet, with nineteen members; in a reflection of the make-up of the Coalition, a majority of the Cabinet Ministers were Conservatives. The establishment of the new Cabinet resulted, to a large degree, in the return of party politics and the termination of the wartime truce. This state of affairs was underlined when a by-election in Spen Valley saw the Coalition Liberals come bottom of the poll, with the seat captured by Labour. Lloyd George’s answer was “fusion”—the welding of the Coalition Liberals and the Conservatives into a formal new national organisation. In 1920, however, it was the case that most Coalition Liberals were more anxious to leave the door open for a permanent reunion with the Asquithian Liberals, rather than to form a permanent union with the Tory Party. They were not prepared to sacrifice, as casually as Lloyd George appeared to be, age-old Liberal policies on such matters as free trade, as well as the Liberal name itself. Indeed, they perceived Lloyd George’s emphasis on national programmes as harbouring right-wing implications. As Lord Riddell noted in his diary: L. G. has steadily veered over to the Tory point of view. He constantly refers to the great services rendered by captains of industry and defends the propriety of the large share of profits they have taken…he seems convinced that Socialism is a mistaken policy.41

Lloyd George wanted strong government and private enterprise—but private enterprise that would give the workers the certainty of fair treatment. What he wanted has been described as the Labour Party programme without class struggle; or, as Churchill put it, the new party would combine the “patriotism and stability of the Conservative Party with the broad humanity and tolerance of Liberalism.”42 The Conservative leader, Andrew Bonar Law, a 53-year-old Canadian iron magnate, was an obscure figure by comparison with the 41

Lord Riddell, Intimate Diary of the Peace Conference and After, 1918–1923 (London: Gollancz, 1993), 179. 42 Charles F.G. Masterman, “The New Democratic Party,” Contemporary Review, Vol. 117 (February 1920): 158.

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Prime Minister. As a result, he was soon perceived by many of his Party colleagues as being out of his depth. He had enjoyed a large element of luck in his rise to the leadership, in which neither of the other two contenders, Austen Chamberlain and Walter Long, had been thought capable of uniting the Party. He was, in effect, the leader the Party had turned to, because they could find no one else. His only noteworthy contribution to the conduct of the war, it has been said, had been the assistance he had given Lloyd George in the overthrow of Asquith in December 1916. Yet his appeal lay in the fact that he represented the two main causes which had captured the attention of Conservatives in 1911: Tariff Reform, and Ireland.43 With a deep understanding of economics, he fashioned a coherent Unionist policy

43 The Irish problem had troubled British politics for more than a century. It originally had economic and religious roots—exploitation of the peasants by their landlords, and perceived anti-Catholic discrimination. Both these grievances had been remedied: landlords had been bought out; the Protestant Church had been disestablished; and Roman Catholics had been emancipated. During the First World War, the remaining single issue was that of national independence. Ireland was still part of the United Kingdom, and its governance was overseen from Dublin Castle. Things were different on the ground. An independent Parliament, or Dáil, had been set up by the Sinn Fein victors in the 1918 general election. The Republic, proclaimed at Easter 1916, was reaffirmed and the Dáil conducted business as though the British no longer existed. De Valera, sole survivor of the leaders of the 1916 rising, was elected President of the Dáil. Though Sinn Fein was non-violent, the resurgent Irish Republican Brotherhood, reconstituted as the Irish Republican Army (IRA) commanded by Michael Collins, launched an armed struggle on behalf of the Republic against the British “invaders.” In 1920, the British used what came to be seen as “terror squads”—the Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries—to combat the IRA. Order was not restored and in 1920 the Government of Ireland Act provided for two Home Rule Parliaments. One was based in Dublin, while the other represented the six Ulster counties in Belfast, overseen by a Council of Ireland, but Sinn Fein refused to recognise the southern Parliament and Ulster refused to recognise the Council of Ireland. The Ulster Unionists, however, accepted both partition and their own Parliament as their own government, and Ulster was the only part of Ireland to receive Home Rule. George V opened the first North of Ireland parliament in 1921. When negotiations about the future status of Ireland broke down over the proposal that Ulster should be put under Dublin for a limited period of a month a year, Bonar Law, who had left office on the grounds of ill-health in March 1921, threatened to return and lead Unionist opposition unless Ulster was left independent. What was in effect civil war continued until an Irish Free State was approved by the British parliament in 1922 and Ulster was formally separated from the rest of Ireland. See Alan J.P. Taylor, English History 1914–1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 153–59.

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on Tariff Reform and, as the son of an Ulsterman, Unionism was second nature to him. Bonar Law’s successor, Austen Chamberlain, who became leader of the Conservative Party after Law’s retirement in March 1921, had a closer relationship with Lloyd George than Law had had, albeit on a clear masterservant basis. Although other Unionist Ministers like Balfour and Lord Birkenhead were similarly well disposed to the Prime Minister, their Party’s overwhelming numerical superiority did not, as has been remarked, bode well in relation to Lloyd George’s hopes of carrying through a reforming domestic agenda. In reality, he was utterly dependent on Unionist rank and file support. Without it, as became increasingly clear, he led nothing but a Parliamentary rump. Nevertheless, by 1922, three years after the “Coupon election”, despite unceasing vituperation and abuse from Conservative backbenchers and their friends in the right-wing press, Lloyd George was still seen by many as the dominant figure on the political scene. Yet as H.A.L. Fisher wrote to him on 20 March 1922: It seems to me to be quite clear that the rank and file of the Tory Party will never be content until they have tried the experiment of a pure Tory administration. They want to get rid of you and they want to get rid of your Liberal Ministers…Meanwhile, the position is disagreeable and humiliating for the Liberals in the Government. The loyalty of our Conservative colleagues in the government is perfect but our colleagues do not command their following and their following wishes us away. I am therefore of the opinion that we should allow this experiment of a pure Tory Government to be tried. It will last for a few months and then, when our friends are faced with an Election, they will find that they need our support once more.44

Sir William Sutherland took a somewhat different line, although he was equally pessimistic. In a memorandum to Lloyd George on 2 January 1922, he opined that: [S]peaking generally, our routine Liberal politicians, especially of the elderly school, over-rate the importance of many of our old party war cries [to] the modern electorate. All Liberals do a lip service in appropriate areas, to free trade, temperance legislation, education, Home Rule (or Free States), all round, etc.; but the things that really matter at the present time are the earnings that can keep a home together…The average voters are grim realists today.45

44 45

Lloyd George Papers, F/16/7/84, quoted in Morgan, Lloyd George, 199–200. Lloyd George Papers, F/35/1/1, quoted in Morgan, Lloyd George, 199.

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Such views reflected the general Liberal Coalitionist feeling that the growing Tory dominance in the Government left them with no tenable position, a situation made even more difficult by persistent industrial relations crises stirred up, particularly, by the trade union movement. Though Churchill had been somewhat mollified by the Government’s widening of the entitlement to unemployment insurance, he was now moving to the extreme Right on domestic issues and in the face of threats of social disruption from the Left. The depth and nature of the opposition to much of what Lloyd George wanted to do by way of reform, was highlighted in an essay in Nation by Harold Laski in 1920. There, he calculated that “the House of Commons included 61 insurance directors, 138 general managers, 115 land owners, 28 bank directors, 17 coal directors and 102 lawyers.”46 These were the MPs whom Stanley Baldwin described as “hard-faced men who look as if they have done well out of the war.”47 It has been said that these MPs: saw membership in the House of Commons as a useful way to protect or promote their private affairs…The tragedy of 1918, was not so much that the new Parliament was made up of men concerned with the protection of the traditional capitalist classes of Great Britain, but that there was nothing in the circumstances of the election to suggest that they should be concerned with anything else…[They were essentially] men of the eighteenth-century Parliaments who took it for granted that they served the interests which had put them there—the East India Company, the West Indian sugar planters, or the Crown.48

Such attitudes and opposition make it less than surprising that the Lloyd George Government suffered more defeats over its lifetime than any other administration of the twentieth century.49 The Labour MPs who formed the “official” opposition were nearly all trade unionists, making the 1918 Parliament an early model of what eventually became the political shape of the twentieth century.50 This was further emphasised by the crumbling of the pre-war willingness of the enfranchised working man to vote either for the traditional governing parties, or for individual parliamentary candidates of 46 “Mr George and the Constitution”, Nation, 9 October 1920, quoted in Gilbert, British Social Policy, 30. 47 T.F. Lindsay and Michael Harrington, The Conservative Party 1918–1979 (London: Macmillan, 1979), 29. 48 Gilbert, British Social Policy, 24. 49 Gilbert, British Social Policy, 30. 50 Lindsay and Harrington, The Conservative Party, 27.

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the traditional governing classes. This was true even in working class constituencies, and, instead, class-based allegiances came to the fore. Though the full development of class consciousness was delayed initially by feelings of loyalty to Lloyd George, two manifestations of the phenomenon soon became evident. The first was the emergence of the threatened use of extra-legal direct action in pursuit of political ends. In this respect, the example of Soviet Russia was infectious and informed the thinking of factions pressing for a general strike. The second, less militant, manifestation was the growing attitudinal change in relation to the nature of the State’s obligation to the individual. As significant as the threat of strikes, this second manifestation of class consciousness was encapsulated in the Labour Party’s election slogan of “Work or Maintenance.” The Liberal Party manifesto for the December 1918 election— issued under Asquith’s name, since he was still the Party’s official leader— had been imprecise in terms of prospective reform initiatives. Asquith, who went on to lose his seat in the election, wrote in the manifesto that he would: recommend…the formula of a national minimum…we ought not to be content until every British citizen—man, woman, and child—has in possession or within reach a standard of existence—physical, intellectual, moral, social—which makes life worth living.51

The Labour Party manifesto, as well as containing general passages on such matters as the need for “a million good houses”, “a levy on capital”, “land nationalisation”, the “extension of liberty and democracy in Europe”, and so on, went further than its Liberal counterpart in demanding: the immediate nationalisation and democratic control of vital public services, such as mines, railways, shipping, armaments, and electric power; the fullest recognition and utmost extension of trade unionism…an altogether higher status for labour, which will also mean better pay and conditions…the abolition of the menace of unemployment, [and] the recognition of the universal right to work or maintenance.52

All these issues, however, had been effectively set aside in the election campaign. As it reached its climax, the campaign became dominated by the rise of a violent anti-Germanism—the manifestation of a mood 51 “Herbert Asquith’s Election Address”, 1918 Liberal Party General Election Manifesto, accessed 10 November 2021. http://www.libdems.co.uk/manifestos/1918/1918-liberal-manifesto.shtml. 52 “Labour’s Call to the People”, 1918 Labour Party General Election Manifesto, accessed 10 November 2021. http://www.labour-party.org.uk/manifestos/1918/1918-labour-manifesto.shtml.

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shared by all victor countries that was based on an overwhelming sense of patriotism. Jingoistic rhetoric forced out any reasonable discussion of how the pledges of social improvements might be met, and this meant that Lloyd George’s eventual victory was not won on a platform of reconstruction, or an agreement on what needed to be done to improve the conditions of the British people. The calls for revenge against Germany, which focused on reparations and the importance of putting the Kaiser on trial, drowned out sensible discussion of the need to get to grips with the two burning issues of housing and health.53 War demands had, however, inescapably reinforced the shocking reality of the poor state of public health and national physical deterioration which had first become evident at the time of the Boer War. To tackle these issues, there was some regrouping of Ministries after the war. Of particular interest to this study, a Ministry of Health was established, combining the duties of the Local Government Board and the health insurance commissions. The Ministry of Labour retained its role of running Labour Exchanges and the unemployment insurance scheme. Otherwise, the new administration which Lloyd George announced on 10 January 1919 was little changed functionally from the old one.54 In the euphoria of victory, patriotic unity and calls for “homes for heroes”, Conservatives at all levels were genuinely willing to support bold plans overseen by Liberal Ministers such as Christopher Addison and Herbert Fisher—especially if they would promote social stability by erecting an anti-Socialist front.55 As the effects of the immediate post-war boom gave way to rising levels of inflation and unemployment after 1920, and the pre-war schemes came under pressure to 53 The most vindictive expressions of Germanophobia came from Horatio Bottomley, editor of John Bull, a publication described by Neil Berry as a “chauvinistic weekly paper aimed at working men who liked beer and sport and sweepstakes.” Bottomley “vilified Germans as ‘Germhuns.’” He had endorsed Lloyd George’s pledge when he took over from Asquith to deliver Germany “a knock-out blow” and supported him, too, when he rebuffed the “peace without victory” mooted by President Woodrow Wilson. More pointedly, “days before the Armistice, at a mass gathering in London’s Albert Hall, he echoed the common cries, ‘Hang the Kaiser’ and ‘Make Germany Pay’ and served notice on Lloyd George that a ‘weak peace’ [would be] anathema to the British people.” See Neil Berry, “Godfather of populism: The rabid rise of Horatio Bottomley,” Times Literary Supplement 6158 (9 April 2021): 22. 54 Taylor, English History, 148. 55 Christopher Addison, 1st Viscount Addison, a Liberal, was Minister of Health. He resigned from the Liberal Party and joined the Labour Party in 1922. In the same year he published The Betrayal of the Slums (London: H. Jenkins Ltd., 1922). Herbert (H.A.L.) Fisher was MP for Sheffield Hallam, and served in the Lloyd George Government as President of the Board of Education.

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cope with the new realities and the attitudinal shifts in expectations discussed above, the Conservative rank and file became anxiously aware of the costs involved. In 1911, William Beveridge had built into the insurance scheme an elaborate framework designed to protect the solvency of the Insurance Fund, which meant that no provision was made for those who had exhausted their benefits. Lloyd George’s reaction to the situation was to extend insurance against unemployment to almost the entire working class—some twelve million workers—the object being to provide a degree of protection against casual short-term unemployment among those earning less than £5 per week. The scheme was to be financed from contributions payable by employers and the employed. The 1911 scheme, which had been limited to three trades in which levels of employment were expected to fluctuate (building, engineering, and shipbuilding), had been extended to a million munitions workers during the war. It had also been granted on a noncontributory basis, and for a limited period, to ex-servicemen as a shield against temporary unemployment following demobilisation. Given that the likely numbers of the unemployed had been grossly underestimated, other piecemeal extensions were introduced, further complicating matters. Consequently, within a relatively short time financial safeguards were forgotten, and what has been described as an increasingly “ramshackle” system became a vast system of unemployment relief, later known as the “dole”, which threatened to bankrupt the State. Two particular problems highlighted this loss of control, both being illustrative of the effect of the “Work or Maintenance” approach. The first was that as long as insurance was available, men were not driven by the prospect of going hungry to look for lower-paid work when their better-paying jobs disappeared. The second was that the impulse to move from declining to developing industries was also delayed. Prolonging benefit payments in such circumstances clearly placed an additional burden on the taxpayer. Even when pressing for higher benefits, workers naturally approved a “generous” national scheme, especially as it shielded them from dependence on the locally administered Poor Law.56 In 1920, taxation and inflation both reached record levels, and the failure to close some of the special wartime Departments made the Government seem extravagant and bureaucratic. Widespread concern was expressed by rank and file Conservatives at the failure of their leaders in the Cabinet to demand meaningful economies. Typifying this concern was the creation of the “Anti-Waste League” by press baron Lord Rothermere, 56

Gilbert, British Social Policy, 31–32.

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which articulated the growing grass-roots alienation from the Coalition and from their leaders. As public criticism also mounted, the Cabinet showed signs of panic. Schemes of further social reform were set aside, Addison was forced into resignation, and a committee, the Geddes Committee, was set up to slash government expenditure (by use of the infamous “Geddes axe”). It was from this point on that the component parts of the Coalition started to drift apart, with a mounting friction that was reflected in growing restiveness in the constituencies. Reversals of policy were not limited purely to the domestic field, however, and Unionists were infuriated by the way that diplomatic compromise and agreement effectively left the south of Ireland to the Nationalists, though this did underwrite Ulster’s independence and met with approval in November of 1921 at the annual Party conference.57 Furthermore, the temperament of the Conservative Party was not helped by Bonar Law’s retirement in March 1921, on the grounds of ill health. Despite lacking a forceful character, Bonar Law provided a respite to those who looked askance at men such as F.E. Smith and Churchill as “opportunistic and unprincipled adventurers whose only interest was in their own advancement.”58 Law was replaced by Austen Chamberlain, who proved less able than his predecessor to confront Lloyd George, and who thus did little to inspire confidence in the Coalition.59 Chamberlain regarded calls for separation from the Coalition and for the election of an independent Conservative government as factious partisanship, and saw no alternative to fighting the election under Lloyd George’s leadership, despite the whiff of honours scandals surrounding the latter and the sense that the Government’s stubborn support for the Greeks against revived Turkish nationalism— which came to a head in the Chanak crisis in September 1922—might lead the country into another war. Part I of the 1911 National Insurance Act dealing with health insurance also ran into trouble during the life of the Lloyd George Coalition. The particular problem derived from the position of workers in insured trades, who had exhausted their entitlement to one year’s free insurance at full benefit after becoming unemployed. When the Act was passed in 1911, it was thought that this period of entitlement would cover the relatively short spells of unemployment which were the norm at the time. A decade later, however, with unemployment extending for far longer periods of time, Parliament passed a Prolongation of Insurance Act providing for the continuation of full medical benefits and reduced cash benefits for more 57 Stuart Ball, The Conservative Party and British Politics (London: Longman, 1995), 64–65. 58 Ball, The Conservative Party, 65. 59 Ball, The Conservative Party, 65–66.

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29

than a year. The Act was renewed every year until, after a Royal Commission report in 1926, beneficial amendments were introduced in the National Health Insurance Act of 1928.60 By 1921, the “welfare system”— if the collective schemes of social support which existed at the time warrant the name—was in a state of confusion. Programmes had grown up haphazardly over the years, reflecting, to varying degrees, attitudinal changes about how best to alleviate the “condition of the people.” Unemployment insurance, for example, was administered through a national framework of Labour Exchanges and cut across the Poor Law which was wholly in local hands. “Insurance” was not felt to be as humiliating as reliance on the Poor Law had long been regarded. If men could no longer find work in their usual jobs, they drew taxpayerfunded benefits for prolonged periods. This removed the threat of destitution which came from dependence on the Poor Law. To be fair to Lloyd George, his desire was to eliminate unemployment, rather than make it bearable. Due to the political circumstances in which he found himself, he was, however, unable to devise reforms that would have commanded a sufficient degree of support. The idea of coalition, which had served so well during wartime, had enabled Lloyd George to be re-elected. However, given the composition of his parliamentary majority, it was not capable of producing the same range of agreements on the questions of enacting further New Liberal social reforms to supplement those which he had successfully launched before the war. As mentioned above, he toyed therefore with the idea of “fusion”, a permanent alliance between the Coalition partners. This “fusion”, which offered the prospect of an extended period in office—under his leadership, of course—might at one and the same time wean the Conservatives away from their reactionary attitudes to social reform. It might also keep at bay an inexperienced Labour Party, which Lloyd George believed might, if elected, succumb to far-Left extremism, a factor which naturally troubled Conservatives. Yet the possibility of turning the Coalition into a unified political organisation, or a “National Party” as he envisaged it, was simply not realistic. The Conservatives needed Lloyd George far less than he needed them, and the economic situation continued to deteriorate. There were serious outbreaks of social and industrial unrest over such matters as housing shortages, high prices, continuing wartime controls in some areas and growing unemployment, accompanied by the reverberations of a vicious civil war in Ireland and the consolidation of Bolshevik rule in 60

Gilbert, British Social Policy, 294–95.

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Russia. In this climate, a series of Coalition defeats in by-elections convinced the Conservative Party that Lloyd George’s leadership was becoming more of a handicap than an asset. In the opinion of Trevor Wilson, by 1922 the Prime Minister had become a liability and had simply ceased to fulfil any essential purpose, though a deeper reason could be found in the “basic lack of sincerity in the alliance of the Conservatives with Lloyd George.”61 Some amongst the Conservatives, including the likes of Stanley Baldwin, a man of high moral character, remained loyal to Lloyd George. In truth, many were more interested in benefitting from his blatant sale of honours—a practice which was to do him great harm publicly—than in supporting his policies. Overall, however, the “fusion” idea was a principal factor in isolating him in everyday politics and, even while he formally remained the King’s First Minister, was key to his eventual eclipse. That the end was nigh was signalled in a manifesto issued by the Marquess of Salisbury in June, which called for the revival of true Conservative and Unionist principles. In this manifesto Salisbury spoke inter alia of the: grave peril and chaos in Ireland, the confusion and misdirection of foreign policy, unemployment on an unprecedented scale, languishing industries, an overgrown bureaucracy and an overwhelming burden of taxation.62

Within a short time, the manifesto came to be accepted as an accurate reflection of majority Conservative feeling both in Parliament and in the country, and the scene was set for the famous Carlton Club meeting in October 1922. There the decision was taken, somewhat against the advice of the Party leadership, who feared a Party split, that the Conservatives should fight the next general election as an independent party.63 A compelling and succinct summary of the situation at this time has been provided by Robert Blake: [T]he Coalition was overthrown by an alliance of overlapping groups: diehards who detested the Irish Treaty; middle-of-the-road back-benchers who believed Lloyd George would be a liability at the next election; [and] tariff

61

Quoted in Robert Blake, The Conservative Party from Peel to Thatcher (London: Faber and Faber, 2012), 202. 62 Lindsay and Harrington, The Conservative Party, 38–39. 63 Austen Chamberlain and Baldwin made the same mistake as Asquith had made in December 1916. In seeking to prolong the life of the Coalition, and believing that the Party would find itself leaderless and would be defeated if it chose not to take their advice, they failed to realise that “backbenchers could make their will triumph, if they were resolute enough.” Taylor, English History, 191–92.

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31

reform enthusiasts who saw the prospect of a new Tory-Radical breakthrough. They were heavily backed by the Party managers who rightly calculated on a straight Conservative victory.64

Whatever the precise weights given to these varying factors, “fusion” was dead. Lloyd George resigned the same day, and Bonar Law was invited by the King to form a new government. It was the first purely Conservative Government for nearly seventeen years.65 Ewen Green judges the Carlton Club meeting to have been “one of the most dramatic episodes in Conservative party history.”66 The vote brought to an end not only the postwar Coalition and, effectively, the political career of Lloyd George, but also the political futures of leading Conservative coalitionists. The most notable of these ancillary casualties was Conservative leader Austen Chamberlain, who resigned his office and made way for Bonar Law. Though Chamberlain was to be a successful Foreign Secretary from 1924 to 1929, his resignation as Party leader earned him the reputation, in the words of Winston Churchill, as the man who “always plays the game and never wins it.” 67 For most Conservatives voting to end the Coalition, the domestic policies which it had pursued were too redolent of Lloyd George’s pre-war radicalism. Before the Great War, Lloyd George had been the figure most Conservatives loved to hate; his only rival in this respect, for obvious reasons, was Winston Churchill. The New Liberal fiscal strategy embodied in the People’s Budget was deemed to be at best “Socialistic” and at worst simply “Socialist”, with its perceived extravagances and waste, typified by the introduction in 1921 of “uncovenanted” benefits that predicated vast increases in direct taxation. Conservative opinion was that the People’s Budget amply fulfilled the criteria for a socialist measure, providing, as they saw it, for the funding of the poorer classes through class-differentiated “confiscatory” tax policies. Conservatives like C.A. Gregg and A. SteelMaitland, the recent chairman of the Conservative Party (1911–16), accused Lloyd George of having gone over “bag and baggage” to Socialism. The “Socialistic” strategy of the New Liberalism had generated much concern among Conservatives before 1914, but such concern reached new levels after 1918, fuelled particularly by vivid reports of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and its attraction for Socialist parties in Europe.

64

Blake, The Conservative Party, 209. Lindsay and Harrington, The Conservative Party, 37–44. 66 Ewen H.H. Green, Ideologies of Conservatism: Conservative Political Ideas in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 114. 67 Green, Ideologies, 114. 65

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Matters were not improved by rumours that a Royal Commission on Income Tax and a Parliamentary Select Committee on Wartime Wealth were likely to recommend a Capital Levy on wartime profits. David Marquand, however, presents a more nuanced picture of Lloyd George’s political position at the time he was forced out of office for personal and perceived political failings: He saw, more clearly than any other political leader, that Britain could survive in a changing world only if she changed herself; he also saw…the ‘false dichotomy’ between capitalism and socialism gave no guidance to the sort of changes that were needed…[His answers] were neither ‘capitalist’ nor ‘socialist’; they were designed to use the power of the state to make capitalism work properly. As such, they were much more modern in conception than anything else on offer at the time. But…they did not look modern…So, by a terrible paradox, the most creative and adventurous politician of the day appeared to most of his countrymen as a querulous and self-seeking voice from the past.68

The reality was, however, that “the sort of coalitionism associated with Lloyd George’s post-war Administration did not completely die out in October 1922.”69 Indeed, after his ejection from office, he worked assiduously to break up the Conservative Party by bringing its more advanced thinkers into his orbit with a view to forming a Centre Party, which would also include the more moderate members of the Labour Party. The idea of “fusion” was not entirely dead! As he told his wife, he did not care who won office, since he was “working for a break 2 or 3 years hence, after we have formed a Centre Party with a strong progressive bias.”70 It followed that the question of whether the idea of a Centre Party had been entirely abandoned was a constant preoccupation of official Liberals and mainstream Conservatives throughout the mid-1920s. Alarm bells rang, for example, when Churchill, after a period of silence, spoke out in May 1923 “for combined action by the Liberal and Conservative parties to resist socialism.”71 It is even possible that Baldwin’s adoption of protection in late 1923 was intended as much as anything else as a means of “scotching [the 68

David Marquand, The Progressive Dilemma: From Lloyd George to Kinnock (London: Heinemann, 1991), 37. 69 Geoffrey R. Searle, Country Before Party. Coalition and the Idea of National Government in Modern Britain, 1885–1987 (London: Longman, 1995), 148. 70 Kenneth O. Morgan, ed., Lloyd George Family Letters 1885–1936 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1973), 246. 71 Paul Addison, Churchill on the Home Front, 1900–1955 (London: Faber and Faber, 2013), 245.

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emergence of] a new Lloyd George-dominated Centre Party.”72 What all this betokened for the Conservatives’ future commitment to improving the lot of the working classes, if and when they were returned to power, is dealt with in detail in the next chapter.73 The election which followed in November 1922 brought about a major realignment of political power. The clear winner, the Conservative Party, was to spend all but eight of the next 42 years in office. Labour emerged as the main opposition to the Conservatives, and the Liberal Party, which fought the election as two separate factions under Asquith and Lloyd George, fell into permanent decline. The distribution of seats produced by the election was as follows: Conservatives, 344; Labour, 142; Asquith’s Liberal Party, 62; and Lloyd George’s National Liberal Party, 53. It has been claimed that despite its convincing victory, the Conservative Party was intellectually impoverished at the time, a claim borne out by the unimaginative programme put forward in its manifesto, which was all but silent on the question of social reform. In relation to the linked questions of trade and unemployment, what was offered was an undertaking to review the policies of its predecessor Government, though there was an acceptance that there could be “no palliatives”, whatever the outcome of the review. The revival of trade was the only cure for unemployment, in respect of which the frequent mentions of trade with the Empire carried with them a flavour of protectionism. Free trade or protectionism was still a live issue in the Party. The first essential, however, would be to reduce expenditure to the lowest possible level in order to give respite to the taxpayer. Bonar Law believed that his Party had nothing to gain from espousing social reform, a belief almost certainly reinforced by the outcome of the election. In Philip Guedalla’s view, Bonar Law became Prime Minister principally because he was not Lloyd George, and was more unlike Lloyd George than any other party leader.74 The Labour Party manifesto was, not unexpectedly, far more challenging in relation to social reform, its tone being set by warning the electorate not to return a Conservative Government of “naked reaction.”75 It proposed a fairer redistribution of tax liabilities, by increasing Death 72

Searle, Country Before Party, p. 149 Green, Ideologies, 117–18. 74 Philip Guedalla, quoted in Robert R. James, Churchill: A Study in Failure (London: Penguin, 1981), 148. 75 “Labour’s Call to the People”, 1922 Labour Party General Election Manifesto, accessed 9 December 2021, https://web.archive.org/web/20040212175705/http://labour-party.org.uk/ manifestos/1922/1922-labour-manifesto.shtml. 73

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Duties and Supertax on the wealthy and reducing tax on low incomes. Unemployment and low wages caused by the policies of the Liberal and Unionist Conservative Government had brought distress to the bulk of working people, and Labour’s policy would be to provide work or maintenance for the unemployed. This would be achieved by the national organisation of production and a large programme of necessary and useful public works. Mines and railways would be nationalised. There would be an increased share of control for workers in industry, and an improved Workmen’s Compensation Act. More generous provision would be made for Old-Age pensioners, and the Poor Law would be abolished. All this was intended, through common sense and the promotion of justice, to provide a bulwark against Bolshevism and Communism, and to prevent class war. If this smacked somewhat of being designed to be all things to all men—or at least to those inclined to support the Labour Party—it threw into perspective what were seen as the failures of Lloyd George’s Government. The vast increase in Labour’s representation in Parliament, from 63 in 1918 to 142 in 1922, showed that Labour had become a Party which might expect to see itself in government in the not-too-distant future. Despite appearances to the contrary, the Party had been greatly strengthened by the war. It had initially been divided into those who supported the war (and whose leaders served in the Coalition), and those who opposed the war. Yet it had gained experience both of being in office and being in opposition, and differences had been healed in 1917 when Arthur Henderson was forced out of the Cabinet. Before 1918, the Party had been an association of trade unions and socialist organisations, but had no individual members and little support from the middle class. By the new constitution which it acquired in 1918, however, it was converted into a national party with local branches and individual members.76 By 1922 it had 133 full-time constituency agents. It had also committed itself in its new constitution to the objectives of socialism. The will to change in this radical way sprang from a number of sources. Most important of these were that the parliamentary alliance with the Asquithian Liberals had ceased to exist, largely because of the increasingly illiberal record of the Coalition, and that Liberal organisation was clearly deteriorating in working-class strongholds around the country, throwing up a potential for defections to Labour by middle-class radicals.77 Clause Four of the new Labour Constitution had created a line of demarcation between the Labour and Liberal Parties. Meanwhile, Labour’s 76 Charles L. Mowat, Britain Between the Wars 1918–1940 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), 18. 77 Martin Pugh, The Making of Modern British Politics: 1867–1945 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982), 180.

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advocacy of social reform, almost entirely abandoned by the Lloyd George government from 1920 onwards, meant that it was able to consolidate support among groups who felt the promises of 1918 were being betrayed.78 By 1922, therefore, the Labour Party had a distinctive organisational form and ethos and was increasingly well-funded, which gave it a powerful presence in the challenging circumstances which politicians faced at the time. What conclusions can be drawn about the Conservative contribution to the development of welfarism by 1922? In general terms, the Conservative Party has always looked to people to provide for themselves. The key to enabling them to do so was to create opportunities for paid work. The preferred mechanism for doing this was seen to be Tariff Reform, though the advancement of Unemployed Workmen proposals in 1903 and the acceptance of the Labour Registry idea were indications that the Party was developing greater social consciousness in the rapidly changing economic circumstances prevailing at the turn of the twentieth century. That this change was not deep-rooted, however, became clear during the “Coupon” Coalition’s period in office after the end of the First World War. During this period, piecemeal extensions of existing social systems to cope with the turmoil of demobilisation, together with deteriorating economic conditions, combined, in effect, to create an uncontrolled dole system. This free for all, combined with distaste for further, so-called “New Liberal” measures resulted in the Conservative Party’s abandonment of any form of collectivism, and its decision to pursue its own independent agenda. Winston Churchill was though an exception to almost all of this. It was principally his objection to the Conservative Party’s adoption of tariff reform, as its principal policy for funding social amelioration, which caused his defection to the Liberal Party ranks in 1904. The influence of people such as the Webbs, together with the National Efficiency movement, encouraged Churchill’s forthright support of Lloyd George and his reform package.79 Churchill’s contribution to the carriage of the far-sighted Liberal

78

Andrew Thorpe, A History of the British Labour Party (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2nd revised edition, 2001), 47. 79 Although Lloyd George claimed credit for stimulating serious consideration of the need for unemployment insurance following a visit to Germany in 1908, some historians argue that Churchill’s drive and initiative were more important factors and that he had been considering how to tackle the problems of unemployment, sickness, and old age in 1907. Others point to the statistical work being pursued under his oversight by the Board of Trade “as the necessary germ from which the Liberal legislation was to grow.” See Hay, Origins, 51.

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measures that laid the foundations of the modern welfare state cannot, therefore, be seriously challenged. On the other hand, whether it can be claimed that in making his contribution he was in any way acting out of traditional Conservative principles, as they are generally understood, is another matter entirely. Churchill was certainly committed to the fundamental Conservative objective of combatting socialism, which he believed the Liberal programme would further. Nor can it be overlooked that by 1922, he was re-absorbed into the Conservative Party where he remained as a leading light—though again, not undimmed, from time to time—for the next thirty years. Where his true instincts lay and what his often hugely controversial actions during that lengthy period reveal about them—and him, both as a politician and an individual—are examined in depth in Chapter Eight. Yet whatever influence he might have wielded, it cannot be doubted that, as Chapter 3 will demonstrate, it was “the political genius of Baldwin, assisted by the domestic policy expertise of Neville Chamberlain” that brought about the development of “a new style of Conservatism that [was to] secure the Party its electoral dominance throughout the inter-war period.”80

80

Willetts and Forsdyke, After the Landslide, 32.

CHAPTER THREE THE CONDITION OF CONSERVATISM BEFORE THE SECOND WORLD WAR

The popular image of Neville Chamberlain as an ineffectual, pipe-smoking, fuddy-duddy arch-appeaser and architect of the ill-fated and humiliating Narvik expedition is unfair and misleading. It was during the 1940 Parliamentary debate on that campaign that he was fatally damaged by Leo Amery’s evocation of the famous Cromwellian injunction to the Government: “Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.”81 The abiding deleterious image was formed largely on the basis of his handling of affairs over a period of less than six months—though appeasement, of course, had a longer history—and in the most difficult circumstances as the Government, Parliament, and the public as a whole struggled to come to terms with ever-increasing German aggression. Even today he “continues to attract almost universal public obloquy. [Winston] Churchill is synonymous with national glory, Chamberlain with ignominy.”82 What is often overlooked, however, is that the so-called appeasement policies of the immediate pre-war years were strongly supported by the vast majority of the public, and almost all Members of Parliament. This dichotomy is aptly summed up by Chris Renwick, who wrote that: Now best known almost entirely for his short stint as Prime Minister during the late 1930s, during which he stepped off a plane from Munich waving a piece of paper signed by Adolf Hitler and fatefully proclaimed “Peace for our time”, Chamberlain is frequently considered a man who was not up to the job when the country needed him most. The truth is that he recognised his personal incapacity to be a wartime leader, as revealed in the following October 1939 entry in his diary: “How I do hate and loathe this war...I was never meant to be a war leader and the thought of all those homes wrecked...makes me want to hand over my responsibilities to someone 81

Hansard, HC Deb. 7 May 1940, 5th ser. vol. 360, col. 1150. Alistair Cooke (Lord Lexden), “Neville Chamberlain’s Private Army”, in Tory Policy-Making: The Conservative Research Department 1929–2009, ed. Alistair Cooke (Eastbourne: Manor Creative, 2009), 5. 82

38

Chapter Three else.” And the sight of his own followers trooping into the Opposition lobby after the fateful Parliamentary debate on the Munich settlement simply confirmed his instinct. Yet a popular fixation with that moment has overshadowed a long, distinguished and—in the case of social policy— important career.83

The balanced view of the “Munich moment” and its aftermath offered by Robert Blake seems, to me, to confirm this assessment: Chamberlain’s desire to seek a settlement with Mussolini and Hitler, his conviction that war was a terrible evil, his horror of a repetition of 1914, were attitudes which deserve commendation not censure. But he was too reasonable, too moderate, too parochial perhaps to see that he was not dealing with people who were remotely like himself.84

In the words of Anthony Seldon: The star player in the 1924–29 administration was…Joseph Chamberlain’s second son Neville, half-brother to Austen and author of the 1924 statement, Aims and Principles...He served as Minister of Health throughout the government…and it was [his] incisive energy which lay behind much of the government’s social legislation.85

Picking up the family point, A.J. Davies expresses the opinion that: [m]uch of [Neville’s] social reforming spirit was derived from his father Joseph, “Radical Joe”, who had transformed the city of Birmingham in the 1870s by introducing schemes of municipalisation wherever private enterprise had failed…Unlike some of his colleagues, Chamberlain seems to have been well aware of social conditions away from the comforts of Westminster. In 1927, for instance, he visited the mining areas in the aftermath of the General Strike and wrote that “the devastation in the coalfields can only be compared with the war devastation of France.”86

The most concise, all-round view of Chamberlain’s strengths and weaknesses is that offered by Roger Hermiston, describing him at the time of his resignation:

83

Renwick, Bread For All, 164. Blake, The Conservative Party, 238. 85 Anthony Seldon and Stuart Ball, eds., Conservative Century: The Conservative Party since 1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 34. 86 Andrew J. Davies, We, The Nation: The Conservative Party and the Pursuit of Power (London: Little, Brown, 1995), 304–5. 84

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39

This tall, lean seventy-one-year-old, with greying moustache, curved nose and penetrating dark eyes, had never relished the responsibility of being Prime Minister during wartime. He was naturally shy, and his meticulous mind and social conscience were better suited to the field of domestic reform: improving factory conditions, clearing Britain’s slums, empowering local government. His domain was the committee room rather than the grand stage. Exhorting a nation sending young men to the battlefield and shaping military strategy were uncomfortable duties.87

Finally, on the occasion of Churchill’s formal election as Conservative Party leader at a meeting in Caxton Hall on 9 October 1940, Lord Halifax, presiding at the meeting, suggested that “the outgoing leader might have failed to preserve peace, but the historian will perhaps record...a more informed and balanced judgement than is always attainable today.”88 Chamberlain died from cancer at his home at Highfield Park in Hampshire, a month later, on 9 November 1940. Five days afterwards, his ashes were interred alongside those of fellow Conservative, Prime Minister Andrew Bonar Law, in the nave of Westminster Abbey. What follows in this chapter is, I believe, confirmation of Lord Halifax’s view about how future historians would regard Chamberlain’s contribution to the development of Conservative domestic policies. The slow ebb of confidence which occurred over the last few months of Chamberlain’s premiership came at the end of almost two decades during which, first as Minister of Health, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and finally Prime Minister, he had established himself as one of the most forceful figures in modern British political history. As Robin Harris observes, “[t]hough his enemies sneered at his background in local government to belittle his abilities—Lloyd George scathingly described him as ‘a good mayor of Birmingham in an off year [1915]’—his abilities in domestic affairs were truly exceptional.”89 Furthermore, as Alastair Cooke writes, “[p]eople seem unwilling to accept that a politician can be a brilliant success in one area while coming badly to grief in another.”90 When he took over from Stanley Baldwin as Prime Minister in 1937, Chamberlain set out to dictate Government policy in both domestic and foreign affairs in a manner very much at odds with Baldwin’s diffident “Safety First” approach, and soon established a strong personal ascendancy over both Parliament and

87 Roger Hermiston, All Behind You Winston: Churchill’s Great Coalition 1940–45 (London: Aurum Press, 2016), 4. 88 Hermiston, All Behind You, 111. 89 Robin Harris, The Conservatives: A History (London: Bantam Press, 2011), 306. 90 Cooke, “Neville Chamberlain’s Private Army”, 6.

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Chapter Three

all sections of his Party.91 Chamberlain was, of course, in a strong position to be able to do so. He was the leader of a Conservative-dominated National Government which had been re-elected in 1935 with a majority in excess of 200 seats. He particularly exploited this strength by adopting an uncompromising brand of partisan politics: he treated Labour MPs on occasions with ill-concealed contempt, which they repaid by cordially detesting him. This was aptly illustrated in 1940, when they flatly rejected the idea that they might enter a Coalition Government under his leadership. In large part, it was his treatment of his opponents which led to the intensification of party hostilities during his premiership—hostilities that never entirely subsided during the war, re-emerging during the subsequent election campaign. The tragedy for Chamberlain was that he reached the pinnacle of power only as war loomed. The extent to which he might have influenced the development of Conservatism, had his period as Prime Minister been free from the shadow of international upheavals and had he been able to win a 1940 election in peacetime conditions, remains a matter of speculation. The comments about his character outlined above suggest that he would have exerted a considerable degree of influence. Indeed, Alistair Cooke believes that “if peace had by some miracle been preserved, there is every reason to suppose that an election would have produced a thumping majority for Chamberlain’s evolving welfare state and killed off socialism in Britain.”92 Chamberlain was a key member of the Baldwin Government of 1924 to 1929—a Government that presented itself as the party of moderation, an approach that would surely have been expressed in the tone set had there been a peacetime Chamberlain administration.93 Chamberlain’s politics were based on the need for action. David Marquand, for instance, noted his “restless reforming zeal and administrative

91

Though this study is not concerned with foreign affairs, it is fair to note, as an antidote to the perception that appeasement and weakness are two sides of the same coin, that “Britain was … the archetypical satisfied power. Satisfied powers have an overriding interest in appeasing the desire of dissatisfied powers to cause trouble. To that extent, Britain was bound to be in the forefront of the appeasers.” Harris, The Conservatives, 329. 92 Cooke, “Neville Chamberlain’s Private Army”, 23. 93 Stuart Ball, Baldwin and the Conservative Party. The Crisis of 1929–1931 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 4–5: “Chamberlain bought into Baldwin’s argument that the Tories had to show they could be trusted with social reform, much as MacDonald wanted Labour to demonstrate it could be trusted with the economy.” See also Renwick, Bread For All, 164.

The Condition of Conservatism before the Second World War

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drive.”94 Chamberlain was a technician who enjoyed combing through the small print, which is why he was irritated by Baldwin’s obsession about the need to avoid doing anything which might alienate the Party’s supporters in rural districts. Unlike Baldwin, he was ruled by an instinct for order, and would impart an edge on every question. When Chamberlain’s mind was made up, it was hard to change: he wanted the future mapped out and under control, in which respect he asked his Departmental Ministers to envisage two-year programmes. The question, however, is in what direction his impatience for action would have led him as head of a full-term peacetime government. Would he, as suggested above, have extended the “moderate collectivism” towards which Conservatism, in its “national guise”, had been moving? Would he, given time, have emerged as a radical democrat, as many of his pronouncements and his obvious compassionate understanding of “the people”, suggested that he might? Finally, would his actions have overturned the idea that the National Governments of the 1930s had been sterile administrations—a view which would contribute so markedly to Labour’s 1945 election victory—and persuaded the electorate to see the period as broadly progressive in the area of social reform? One of Chamberlain’s diary entries supports this proposition: “I felt that the party and the country needed a lead, and an indication that the government was not wavering and drifting without a policy.”95 The irony is, of course, that “being perhaps better prepared than any man since Gladstone to lead a Conservative reforming ministry, his three years [as Prime Minister] were wholly spent in the shadow or the utter darkness of war.”96 His ability successfully to head a government with a strongly shared sense of purpose was constrained by the fact that he was not surrounded by visionary ministers. In the first year of Chamberlain’s premiership, Churchill wrote of “a marked and felt dearth of men of high ability”, a factor which became only too evident in the manner in which Churchill himself—in many ways a most unlikely candidate—eventually emerged as his successor. Indeed, Chamberlain’s administration has been described as a one-man Government. Part of the explanation for this may be, of course, that as a progressive reformer, he sat loosely to party, a fact which, taken together with external developments, doubtlessly contributed to the overall sense that he worked in a state of siege.

94 David Marquand, Britain Since 1918: The Strange Career of British Democracy (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2009), 86. 95 Andrew Jones and Michael Bentley, “Salisbury and Baldwin”, in Conservative Essays, ed. Maurice Cowling (London: Cassell, 1978), 36–37. 96 Keith Feiling, The Life of Neville Chamberlain (London: Macmillan, 1946), 303.

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In what follows, I examine Chamberlain’s actual record as a social reformer during his various periods of time in office, and attempt an analysis of whether his achievements provided any sort of a basis for the reconstruction exercises undertaken by the wartime coalition and hence, to some degree or other, for Labour’s post-war programme of social legislation. In this respect, it is worth noting Geoffrey Searle’s observation that “the origins of ‘Butskellism’ [see Chapter Seven], are said to lie in the 1930s”, as well as the occasional suggestion that Chamberlain was a “socialist”, albeit in the sense of being “a serious planner”, rather than an ideologue.97 To begin, it is helpful to consider the general economic contexts within which social legislation was effected. Affordability is, of course, a critical factor at any time when wide-ranging social legislation is being planned. In November 1922, after the fall of the Lloyd George Coalition, Bonar Law constructed a “government of the second eleven”, with Baldwin as his Chancellor of the Exchequer. After calling and winning a general election, however, Bonar Law retired in May 1923 on grounds of failing health. Afterwards, for lack of any other acceptable candidate, the glittering prize of the premiership fell into Baldwin’s lap. There is some confusion about how this development actually came about. In those days, the usual method of settling the succession lay in soundings taken by the King’s private secretary, Lord Stamfordham. In view of his illness, Bonar Law had asked to be excused from making any recommendation. Law’s private secretary, Colonel Waterhouse, claimed however that the letter of resignation, prepared by Lord Davidson after discussion with a heavily sedated Law and then conveyed by him to Stamfordham, was, in fact, a strongly worded plea that Baldwin should be appointed. The conclusion which has been drawn is that the letter expressed Davidson’s view of his understanding of Law’s intentions. The only other serious contender for the succession was Lord Curzon, who happened to be strongly backed by Beaverbrook, but the King chose Baldwin on the grounds that, since 1911, the political centre of gravity had moved to the Lower House, making it publicly inadvisable to appoint a peer as Prime Minister and particularly when the Cabinet was already over-weighted with peers.98 That Baldwin’s elevation was an extraordinary piece of luck cannot be questioned—seven years earlier, he had been an unknown nonentity on the back benches. After winning the race to the top, however, even with a somewhat fortuitously thin field of runners, one might be forgiven for believing that he then chose to look his gift horse in the mouth. 97 98

Searle, Country Before Party, 187. Blake, The Conservative Party, 214.

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Baldwin held a secure majority and could look forward to four years of Parliament. Nevertheless, he made the ill-fated decision, which was widely condemned by many in his Party as a completely unnecessary abandonment of a position of strength, to appeal to the country for a mandate to introduce tariff reform. Although such a move was anathema to some as being likely to cause “dear food”, it had been enthusiastically supported by many Conservatives ever since it was first advocated by Joseph Chamberlain in 1903. Baldwin believed that tariff reform offered the only solution for unemployment. He also thought that an election victory won on a programme of publicly proclaimed reform was a way of uniting the Party. A narrower political reason for Baldwin’s decision to opt for an early election was the fear that Lloyd George might opportunistically proclaim a conversion to protection, despite his supposed support for free trade. This would separate him from Liberal free-traders, but align his thinking with that of many Conservatives and with leading figures of the old Coalition like Austen Chamberlain and Birkenhead who might be attracted to join him in the formation of a Centre Party. As it happened, Lloyd George did not come out as a protectionist. Yet his popular appeal, which was still widespread, and the sheer inventiveness of his thinking, were major factors in guiding the Liberals to a much better performance in the December 1923 election than might otherwise have been anticipated. With this success, the Liberals were able to put Labour into office under Ramsay McDonald, after registering a vote of no confidence in Baldwin. The Conservatives had won the greatest number of seats, but had been left unable to form a Government without extra-party support. The country had, in overall terms, voted for free trade; therefore, one of the free-trade parties should form the Government. Under these circumstances, the only possibility was Labour. Nonetheless, Baldwin survived as Party leader by presenting himself as an honest politician who had called the election in fulfilment of his predecessor’s pledge on tariffs. Now, however, he was prepared to abandon the policy, to which he was personally committed, until public opinion was ready to accept it. More positively, at a working level, Baldwin formed a Consultative Committee—a “shadow” cabinet as we now know it—with an official policy secretariat. This Committee replaced the previously loose arrangements by which ex-Cabinet ministers had determined Opposition policies. When the Labour Government fell in October 1924, Baldwin returned with the greatest majority ever won in an election. The victory marked the start of a remarkable and enduring grip on Government by the Conservative Party—all the more remarkable since the developments over the previous two decades had seemed to render such a triumph the most

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unlikely of possibilities. During that period, the growing notion of welfarism, the levelling effects of the Great War, the rise of a worrying Socialist alternative in politics and, above all, the arrival of a democratic franchise, ought to have spelled the end for Toryism. But Baldwin’s Party, after offering the electorate a studiously moderate and cautious fiscal programme which provided not for full tariff reform but for safeguarding selected industries from unfair foreign competition, took the first steps on the road to a Conservative domination of politics for the then foreseeable future. The new Prime Minister looked to coax employers and trade unionists into a form of collaborative capitalism. Inclusion for the Unions would complement political inclusion for the Labour Party, and undermine the distinction between socialism and laissez-faire capitalism. Collaboration, as Baldwin saw it, “was the only alternative to anarchy.”99 Of greater relevance to this study, with Baldwin “the confused medley of welfare services bequeathed by the pre-war Liberal Government and the post-war coalition became more coherent and more generous.”100 To the surprise of many, Baldwin appointed Winston Churchill as his Chancellor of the Exchequer in a nod to centrism. As Chancellor, Churchill, a veteran of the great Liberal reforming Government from 1906 to the outbreak of war, worked closely with Chamberlain at the Health Ministry to develop expensive social reforms. He did so particularly in relation to the administration of local government, although, as some have suggested, he may have been motivated by a desire to prove his credentials to Conservatives who were sceptical about his return to the Party.101 Procedurally, Chamberlain supervised the preparation and presentation of the legislation introduced during his time as Health Minister; it is said that he was the workhorse, while Churchill provided the resources. “The son of Lord Randolph and the son of Joseph Chamberlain worked together, as their fathers were never able to do, on a programme of progressive social reform.”102 99

Marquand, Britain Since 1918, 90. Marquand, Britain Since 1918, 86. 101 In 1925, for example, “J.C.C. Davidson [Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty and, later, Chairman of the Conservative Party], one of Baldwin’s closest friends, was obsessed with the fear that Churchill [then Chancellor] intended to use a dispute in the Cabinet over naval construction, as a ploy to oust Baldwin. ‘I had warned him that this was an attempt to get rid of him and that the Old Gang [the ex-coalitionists such as Lloyd George, Austen Chamberlain and Birkenhead] nursed a hatred for him that had never been entirely broken. [And] Davidson was by no means that only one harbouring these suspicions.’” See Blake, The Conservative Party, 221. 102 Lindsay and Harrington, The Conservative Party, 70. 100

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Not all was plain sailing, however: the attempt to reduce the rate of unemployment benefit in certain cases, demanded by Treasury deflationary orthodoxy, provoked understandable and vociferous opposition. When, more broadly, such orthodox attitudes led in 1925 to the restoration of the Gold Standard at its pre-1914 parity, the consequent upward revaluation of sterling, increases in export prices, and the resultant search for trade competitiveness through wage reductions and cuts in employment levels meant that helping the underprivileged became ever more difficult. Such measures posed a serious threat to civil unity, manifested most dangerously by the 1926 General Strike. From that time on, amidst a raft of other troubles, unemployment became the overwhelmingly dominant factor on the political scene. What, then, could be done? The obvious answer was, of course, “protection”, but, for whatever reason, Baldwin could not or would not bring himself to act decisively on this front. He continued to vacillate in spite of intense pressure brought to bear on him from within the Conservative Party. And yet, largely as a result of Chamberlain’s insistence and persistence, the Government still managed to pursue a programme of constructive domestic policies. The reform of local government, the abolition of the Poor Law, and a range of other measures (addressed in detail later in this chapter) were substantial and important reforms. There is thus justice in the claim that the 1924–29 Government made an outstanding contribution to the development of the social services and social security, albeit in the face of extreme economic difficulties. This is an achievement for which Chamberlain and Baldwin can both be commended. In the immediate years after the First World War, the British economy suffered unavoidably from a severe and prolonged economic squeeze, which only abated when the National Government was forced to abandon the Gold Standard in 1931. With Treasury deflationary orthodoxy overcome, the economy thereafter started to recover, in contrast to many other European countries—most notably Germany—where fear of inflation led to the retention of exchange-rate-oriented, tight fiscal policies. Following Bank of England bank-rate cuts, domestic demand recovered as the incomes of those in work rose and exports increased. Unemployment, however, remained high. During 1938, between one and three-quarters and two million men were out of work—that is, over 12 per cent of those available for work (although it should be noted that this level was down from more than 20 per cent during the world slump of 1931). Unemployment was concentrated in the regions of basic industry—in the coal, textiles, shipbuilding and iron and steel communities of Wales, central Scotland, Yorkshire, Lancashire and Tyneside. As Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, Chamberlain can take much of the credit for the overall improvements

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which were made, despite these various challenges. Tax rises were avoided, and budget deficits were kept under control—and remained so until they had to be relaxed to accommodate increased defence spending from 1936– 37 onwards. Although mainstream Conservative thinking in the 1930s remained resolutely committed to a free market economy, Neville Chamberlain, like his famous father, had always been a protectionist. In 1932, he oversaw the imposition of a general tariff of 10 per cent, together with a system of Imperial Preference. As he told the House of Commons: “There can have been few occasions in all our long political history when to the son of a man who counted for something in his day and generation has been vouchsafed the privilege of setting the seal on the work which the father began but had perforce to leave unfinished.”103 The deleterious longer-term consequences of protectionism for national recovery cannot be doubted. Even so, from 1932 until all was overcast by the fear of war and the costs of rearmament, Great Britain more than held her own in economic terms during the period of Chamberlain’s greatest influence. As William Harrington and Peter Young note in their assessment of the economics of the inter-war period: A…gloss…could [be] put on the period by an economic historian taking a broad view [my italics]. Statistically, things were not so bad. For most, the twenty years between the wars had been a period in which their standard of living improved. The majority of people were employed. Their wages and salaries fell but so did prices. Cheap imports, improved methods of mass production…and easy credit all helped those in work to become relatively prosperous. Real national income per head rose by one third.104

Chamberlain’s concern for social reform never faltered through all the interwar economic vicissitudes. As conditions became relatively benign in the 1930s, his role in the formulation of domestic policy grew more dominant. Robin Harris judges that during the entire period after his appointment as Chancellor in 1931, Chamberlain “increasingly ran the Government as a whole.”105 Before moving on to consider his second spell as Chancellor of the Exchequer, which began in 1931, we need to scrutinise his record as Minister of Health, a role that he filled on two occasions in the 1920s. Chamberlain, aged 49, had entered Parliament at the 1918 election as MP 103

John Ramsden, The Age of Balfour and Baldwin 1902–1940 (London: Longman, 1978), 321. 104 William Harrington and Peter Young, The 1945 Revolution (London: DavisPoynter, 1978), 13. 105 Harris, The Conservatives, 321.

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for the new Birmingham constituency of Ladywood. In the brief period between the November 1922 and December 1923 elections, he had served in rapid succession as Postmaster General and Minister of Health under Bonar Law, and then as Chancellor of the Exchequer under Law’s successor, Stanley Baldwin. His first appointment to the post of Minister of Health was made by Bonar Law in 1923, after it was declined by Sir Robert Horne, who had been Chancellor under Lloyd George. As noted earlier, Chamberlain’s tenure of the post was short-lived. Before taking up the position, however, he had asked Law whether he would have a free hand to consider the Government’s policy on rent control, and he had been assured that he would. When he had to wind up for the government in a debate on his very first day in office, he impressed the House by his clearly genuine concern for the issue of housing—which had started to loom large in the public consciousness as a problem area in early 1923—and the related need to improve the people’s health, most particularly the physical health of children. He obviously intended, at the time, to follow words with deeds in these areas, despite having no Parliamentary Under-Secretary with whom to share his burden in the House of Commons, about which he complained bitterly to Law. He did succeed in managing the passage of a Housing Act, on which urgent action could not be delayed.106 Chamberlain also showed an acute awareness of the fear of unemployment amongst the working classes, which he regarded as an indictment of the industrial system. As he later pointed out, the interest of his Health department in unemployment came second only to that of the Ministry of Labour. At the same time, he rejected the formulation and implementation of ill-planned schemes which might well cause immense financial liabilities without significantly alleviating unemployment levels. He pointed out that methods of rating valuation were localised, and that the 106

“At [their existing levels], the return to the landlord [from controlled rents] often failed to cover necessary repairs, let alone any interest on the capital invested in the house. If rents were raised, and many tenants evicted, there would be an outcry. If rents were not raised many properties would fall into still worse disrepair, landlords would be disinclined to let, new properties for letting would not be built and the supply of rented accommodation, essential for mobility, would diminish further.” Chamberlain was convinced that in the face of a massive shortage of houses, “any successful scheme would have to depend substantially on private builders. At the same time, he wanted the local authorities to do their share [and] it was agreed that the subsidy [which was required] should be the same for both. After much haggling about the amounts of money involved and other issues such as the desirable size of local authority housing, agreement was reached and enshrined in the legislation.” David Dilks, Neville Chamberlain, Vol.1, 1869–1929 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 310–11.

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“necessitous areas”, as they were called, with their responsibility for dealing with the highest levels of unemployment, were generally low-rated. Given, therefore, that most employment had national or international underpinnings, there must, as he saw it, be a strong case for spreading the burden through some form of national scheme of insurance. Before Chamberlain had time to formulate wider policies for action, however, he was approached by Baldwin to become Chancellor of the Exchequer. Rather touchingly, on his departure from Health, he was told by his Permanent Secretary, Sir Arthur Robinson, how much he and his staff had enjoyed working under him. They also respected him for giving them “that measure of appreciation which makes work so much easier and more pleasant.” Robinson told him that he was often reminded of Chamberlain’s father, under whom he had been fortunate enough to learn the first lessons of statecraft. At this point, Chamberlain reflected that these rapid changes of responsibility were not giving him the opportunity to make a permanent mark. His apparent frustration was later to be compounded; his position became seriously circumscribed by Baldwin’s ill-judged decision (discussed earlier in this chapter) to ask the electorate for a mandate to introduce a policy of general protection. When the election was lost, Baldwin took advantage of the ensuing period in Opposition—which in the event was to last less than a year—to establish a new apparatus for political research and education. Its work, which brought together Members of Parliament and outside experts in a series of committees, was co-ordinated by Chamberlain. It was almost a rehearsal of the role to be played by the Conservative Research Department (CRD) from 1929 onwards. One of the outputs of the new body was the assembly of material for the next manifesto, entitled Looking Ahead. Its life was short, however; it was closed down after the October election victory, principally because it was believed that responsibility for the sort of assistance it was providing would be assumed by the civil service. Yet this move was contested by many, on the grounds that a government is overwhelmed with administrative business and may easily fail to measure the electoral consequences of its policies. Moreover, a party should be fertile in preparing ideas for the future, based not upon notions and advice served up by Departments, but upon broader political considerations. These judgements were all brought to bear, when the CRD proposal surfaced in 1929. Chamberlain held his Ladywood seat in the general election against Oswald Mosley, but only by the skin of his teeth. As he was not an ambitious politician, he had not lobbied for a return to the Treasury. “I might be a great Minister of Health”, he wrote to his sister Ida on 26 October 1924,

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“but am not likely to be more than a second-rate Chancellor.”107 He was soon to be given his chance. The Ministry of Health, to which he was reappointed in November, possessed a formidable range of responsibilities. It embraced all aspects of housing, many parts of the insurance and pensions arrangements, the central government’s relations with local government, the administration of the Poor Law, and public health. With obvious enthusiasm, Chamberlain told Baldwin that he believed he might be able to “do something to improve the conditions for the less fortunate classes—and that’s after all what we are in politics for”.108 After a short time in his new role, he became the Conservative politician most prominently identified with practical social reform. He was to preside, in John Charmley’s words: over a programme of pragmatic social reform which not only made his name and career, but which also offered a practical alternative to Socialism…Anti-Socialism and [Baldwin-style] English “decency” were all very well, but without Chamberlain the Conservatives would have been hard-pushed to have anything positive to boast about…Chamberlain’s programme allowed the Conservative[s] to escape the imputation of their opponents that they were a party whose sole aim was to prevent the rich paying more income tax…and lent verisimilitude to their claim…that they led a “National” party with policies and sympathies as broad as those of their opponents—but shorn of the ideological element.109

After only a fortnight in office, Chamberlain, together with his principal civil servant, Sir Arthur Robinson, prepared and presented to the Cabinet a programme of legislation for the next four years. It contained twenty-five measures of social improvement. By the time that Chamberlain left the Ministry in May 1929, twenty-one of the measures had been implemented, allowing the Government to be regarded as one of the great reforming administrations of the twentieth century. As Alistair Cooke has noted, in this respect “the [domestic] front has never known a more formidable figure than Neville Chamberlain.”110 As noted earlier, Chamberlain had steered housing legislation through the House of Commons during his previous spell as Minister of Health. With a view to increasing the overall supply of houses, his Housing 107

Dilks, Neville Chamberlain, 405. Robert Self, Neville Chamberlain: A Biography (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006) xxxii. 109 John Charmley, A History of Conservative Politics, 1900–1996 (London: Macmillan Press, 1996), 75. 110 Cooke, “Neville Chamberlain’s Private Army”, 7. 108

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Act of 1923 had principally provided for subsidies to private house builders. Though this would clearly have been of little benefit to those unable to afford to buy a house, Chamberlain believed that by swelling the total volume of houses, the process known as “filtering up” would enable the poor to gradually take over houses vacated by the classes above them. The legislation stimulated the building of 438,000 new private houses by 1929, but the effectiveness of “filtering up” was questionable. Not surprisingly, Labour complained that the Act had failed to meet the desperate need for houses to be available to the poor at rents they could afford. When Labour came into power in 1924, the Minister of Health, John Wheatley, saw through a Housing Act that granted local councils subsidies to build houses. The effect of this was that by 1933, 500,000 council houses had been built at affordable rents. In the debate on the Wheatley Bill, Chamberlain made what Wheatley called a “generous speech” that eschewed partisan criticism and accepted that “trial and error” was justified in the search for an answer to “this age-long question” which affected the lives of so many.111 In the event, there was endless haggling over the size of houses that qualified for the subsidy, and the situation was further complicated by the realisation that, at some point, an additional Bill would be needed to deal with slum properties. The major Acts which followed during Chamberlain’s second term of office at Health reflect the principles guiding his actions. Although he wanted a society of securely-based, self-respecting individuals, he envisaged one which would first help those who helped themselves, and he was prepared to use the power of the State to bring about this end. In so doing, he put in place many of the determinants of modern political life: the supervisory State, the harnessing of regulation to voluntary effort, and the use of block grants and systems of social insurance. On the second reading of his Widows, Orphans and Old Age Pensions Bill, for example, he said that “[o]ur policy is to use the great power of the State, not for the distribution of an indiscriminate largesse, but to help those who have the will and desire to raise themselves to higher and better things.”112 The Bill, taken together with the Rating Bill and the Poor Law legislation which he hoped to introduce, might, as he saw it, prepare the way for some great Act of Consolidation which would in time set on unshakeable foundations a triple partnership between the state, the employer and the employee. This

111

Feiling, Neville Chamberlain, 114. Alistair Cooke (Lord Lexden), “Neville Chamberlain: The Unappreciated Merits”, accessed 11 November 2021. https://www.alistairlexden.org.uk/news/neville-chamberlain-unappreciated-merits.

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would “ensure against all the giant ills that flesh is heir to.”113 The post-war resonance of such a statement would be hard to deny. Since its introduction in 1908, Britain’s pension scheme had been a matter of continuous debate. Labour had consistently argued that the pension rate of five shillings a week—only a quarter of the average labourer’s wage—was too low, and that it should be paid at an earlier age than seventy. It should not, moreover, require claimants to undergo a meanstest. Conservatives, on the other hand, had always been much more concerned with the overall costs of the scheme, influenced greatly by the fact that the initial Liberal cost projections had been grossly understated. They had also taken insufficient account of demographic changes, with people living longer and hence drawing pensions for longer periods. The situation had been exacerbated by the Coalition’s doubling of the pension rate in 1919 and their raising of the qualifying salary cap at the same time. Conservatives felt even more strongly that the scheme should be based on contributions, and not funded from general taxation.114 These varying factors became intertwined to such a degree that in 1923 Baldwin had asked a committee under Sir John Anderson, the Home Office Permanent Secretary, to investigate how the scheme might best be reformed. The Committee prepared a quick interim report before the Conservatives left office, but continued its work under the new Labour government and presented a fuller report to Philip Snowden, the Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer in July 1924. The report’s principal recommendation was that the 1908 scheme should not be placed on a contributory footing. Whilst the Anderson Committee had been completing its work, however, Chamberlain had been working with a secret Conservative Committee so that, if and when the Party was returned to office, a ready-made plan for reform would be to hand. These preparations facilitated the introduction of a draft Bill within four months after Baldwin appointed Chamberlain as his Health Minister. With the support of Churchill, Baldwin’s Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, Chamberlain’s 1925 Orphans and Old Age Pensions Act was designed as a skilful trade-off between the various parliamentary interests.115 The proposed change to a contributory scheme, which would 113

Feiling, Neville Chamberlain, 131–32. Renwick, Bread For All, 164–65. 115 “The reserved and methodical Chamberlain admired but did not entirely approve of the flamboyant aristocrat over at the Exchequer. While the Health Minister admitted that Churchill was ‘brilliant’, his ‘amorality, want of judgement’ and ‘furious advocacy of half-baked ideas’ made him a ‘very dangerous man’. For his part, Churchill was impressed by Chamberlain’s proficiency but regarded him as narrow and unadventurous...Yet while the pair were opposites in terms of character, 114

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bring it into line with the system of health insurance with which it was interlocked, was clearly targeted at his own Party. Unlike the health scheme, however, only employers and employees would be required to contribute, though it was believed that this would make it self-funding. On the other hand, the proposed lowering of the age of entitlement from 70 to 65, and the abolition of the despised means-test, were intended to appeal to the Left. The basic payment of ten shillings per week, though regarded as sparse, was to remain unchanged in order not to discourage private thrift. In any case, it was all that Churchill judged could be afforded at the time. A particular failing of the scheme was that, unlike the provision in the 1908 Act, since the contributory rules applied only to insurable employment, the vast majority of women, not being insurably employed, were treated as dependants and entitled only to pensions based on their husbands’ contributions. Given, however, that in overall terms the revised arrangements were regarded as generous, opposition was generally muted. Labour’s challenges were somewhat undermined by the widely held belief that, on the key point of how pensions were to be paid for, Philip Snowden actually favoured a contributory scheme.116 Of equal or even greater importance in Chamberlain’s mind than pension reform was the long-overdue reform of the rating and valuation system. This he viewed as a necessary precedent to the much-needed revision of the financial relations between the State and Local Authorities. At the time, rating and valuation were attached chiefly to the Poor Law parochial areas and the Poor Law Authorities, and Chamberlain was anxious to transfer their powers to the county boroughs and district councils, which he called “the real living bodies of today.” He also wanted to achieve a single basis of valuation, including that for income tax, and to standardise assessment and address episodic rating through quinquennial revaluations— in some parts of England, for instance, over forty years had elapsed without the sorts of property evaluations necessary to set local rates.117 As the local authorities came to be regarded more and more as convenient vehicles of administration for many services of a national character, the inequities in financing under the Poor Law system became indefensible and reliance came to be placed on annual grants from the centre. Chamberlain managed to streamline the rating bureaucracy to 650 authorities (from nearly 13,000),

they worked in tandem on strategy...and fostered an energetic and ambitious atmosphere within an otherwise undistinguished Tory cabinet’. Peter Ackroyd, Innovation: The History of England, Vol VI (London: St Martin’s Press, 2021), 141. 116 Gilbert, British Social Policy, 246. 117 Dilks, Neville Chamberlain, 425.

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and he also established a discrete form of assessment that simplified the system of evaluation. In doing so, however, he encountered major opposition from the Boards of Guardians who administered the Poor Law.118 Yet if his principal aim was their abolition, he had to persevere—and persevere he did. He was also concerned that the tasks carried out by the Guardians infringed on the activities of Local Authorities. Until this situation was remedied, it would be impossible to create “a properly organised Health Service.”119 Chamberlain argued that, as matters stood, there might be numbers of empty beds in the Poor Law Infirmaries and long waiting times at the Voluntary Hospitals. Proper use could not be made of the total hospital accommodation in an area, until there came into being one health authority charged with the responsibility for the health of the area, so far as that responsibility was a public one. The Rating and Valuation legislation therefore prepared the ground for future reforms; it became law towards the end of 1925. Reforms to the Poor Law were hindered by the industrial troubles of 1926, which saw a consequential rise in the number of people who became unemployed. But the events of that year only served to demonstrate that reform to the Poor Law was more necessary than ever. The provision of relief to the poor was still primarily the responsibility of the Guardians, but these authorities approached the problems caused by unemployment (and poverty) with substantial inconsistency. It took a further three years before the government was able to recalibrate its relationship with local authorities, and even then only after long discussions with the representative local authority bodies. The Guardians, in particular, offered stiff opposition, which Chamberlain attempted to conciliate by assuring them that their members would have opportunities to serve their communities as town or district councillors. When the Bill was published, Labour complained inter alia that its principal failure was to treat the consequences of unemployment as a local, and not a national, responsibility. The reform of local government was long overdue. The Local Government Bill of 1929 sought to deal with legislation stretching back to the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 and the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835. It also addressed the establishment of the county councils and rural councils, which had taken place in the late nineteenth century. The Bill had 115 clauses and 12 schedules, some of them as long as a normal Act. Among its major provisions, the Bill abolished the Boards of Guardians, whose

118

Dilks, Neville Chamberlain, 425–26. Robert Self, The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters: Volume 2, The Reform Years, 1921–1927 (London: Routledge, 2017), xlix.

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powers were transferred to the County Councils and County Boroughs. These agencies were required to establish public assistance committees to administer their new responsibilities, the aim being to spread the cost of relief over much wider areas. To inculcate a new spirit, the Poor Law service was formally renamed Public Assistance. The Bill also stipulated boundary changes, to accommodate movements in population. Furthermore, the Bill completed the introduction of the rating and valuation recommendations of the 1925 Act, and instituted a system of block grants from central to local government for the provision of health services; this enabled a significant extension of hospital facilities. Councils were now empowered to decide whether to treat cases by providing public assistance, or through their education or public health services. Beatrice and Sidney Webb, in particular, thought this to be significant since it accepted the principle of specialisation which had been mooted by the Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission, nineteen years earlier. Overall, the Act struck a balance of responsibilities between local and central government. Chamberlain’s experience of local government in Birmingham had led him to believe that local councils should not act as mere agents of central government. On the other hand, his wider experience of inefficient councils, together with the uneven spread of unemployment, had convinced him that the centre should set standards and then assist local authorities to achieve them in circumstances where local resources were insufficient. As a result, the councils became instruments of national policy. By 1930, about 40 per cent of their income came from government grants. Chamberlain’s intention, however, was not to weaken local government. Indeed, in A.J.P. Taylor’s view, he did more than any other single individual in the twentieth century to strengthen it.120 Whilst the Act reduced the scope of the Poor Law, it still left the unemployed without other benefits aside from public assistance—and public assistance was still the means of dealing with the aged and infirm, widows and orphans not entitled to pensions under the Act, deserted children, the mentally ill, and vagrants. As a result, the problem of unemployment remained unresolved; the situation would only be tackled effectively, as the Minority Report had recommended, by the creation of a national authority. This eventually materialised in 1934 in the shape of the Unemployment Assistance Board. Taking the broadest view, it is difficult to dispute the fact that many of the ills that Chamberlain hoped to cure replicated themselves in the welfare systems introduced after 1945. The balance of power between the centre and local administration, including services such as the 120

Taylor, English History, 256.

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nationalised health service, is still a matter of continual debate, as is the balance of revenue to be raised from local taxes or provided from central government. Had he lived long enough, Chamberlain might have been able to exert his influence over the ways in which the post-war systems were devised—although he would not have accepted the major shift in power to the centre, and the universal entitlements incorporated in many schemes. Chamberlain could, at least, have taken credit for his insistence that welfare provision should be underwritten on a joint contributory basis. Nevertheless, the interwar period was characterised by the “general acceptance of a considerable measure of collectivism, tinged with Socialism.” It is thus true that there was: a genuine dilemma in the Conservative Party over social reform. On the one hand there [was] the genuine compassion felt at the difficult living conditions experienced by many of their fellow men and women; on the other hand, there [was] the conviction that the [existing] system, whatever its faults, offer[ed] the prospect of improvement, albeit slow and gradual, and therefore radical reform [was] invariably counterproductive.121

Moreover, as Arthur Balfour had said in 1895, “Social legislation…is not merely to be distinguished from Socialist legislation but is its most direct opposite and its most effective antidote”—a theme which, as already demonstrated, was a constant leitmotif in Conservative politics.122 The general election of 1929, in which large numbers of women were able to vote for the first time, was the only fully three-cornered contest in British electoral history.123 For the first and last time, three parties— Conservative, Liberal and Labour—fought on something like equal terms, each running more than 500 candidates. Votes were ultimately split almost evenly between Labour and the Conservatives, with Labour winning 288 seats and the Conservatives 260; the Liberals achieved a distant third place with 59 seats. Although Labour did not have an overall majority, Baldwin resigned immediately, and Ramsay MacDonald became Prime Minister for the second time. Arthur Greenwood replaced Chamberlain as Minister of Health, and quickly targeted clearance of the slums in his Housing Act of 1930. 121

Davies, We, The Nation, 305. Davies, We, The Nation, 306. 123 The right of women over the age of 30 to vote in parliamentary elections on the same terms as men, given by the Representation of the People Act 1918, was extended by the Representation of the People Act 1928 to apply to women over the age of 21. 122

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The Government had chosen to fight the election on its record, but its mixed performance in foreign policy was equalled only by its failure to solve the vexed problem of unemployment. Furthermore, the government’s rating reform, carried out just prior to the election, ensured that many householders and shopkeepers received their new and increased assessments just before polling day. In the short term, the Government’s record of social reform had not made a sufficiently positive impact, evoking Chamberlain’s earlier complaint that “thousands have voted against us because they or their relations or even someone they knew had not got a pension or a house.”124 David Dilks has written that “Chamberlain was blamed because he had antagonised traditional supporters, passed measures which many people did not understand and mistimed the reform of rating.”125 Meanwhile the Labour Party had attacked the Tories in their manifesto for sitting “supinely with folded arms…waiting for providence or charity to do its work” when it came to unemployment. Labour had promised more generous benefits for the unemployed, and also pledged to prevent people who had paid into the national insurance fund from being denied payments when their entitlements ran out.126 Once again during a period of Opposition, this time from 1929–31, the Conservatives reappraised their research capability. Some Party members felt that Central Office, the Party’s research arm, was less concerned with the introduction of new concepts than perpetuating outmoded ideas and exerted intense pressure for a new Conservative Research Department (CRD). This body originated in a minute from Baldwin’s Private Office; it was then approved at a meeting of the Shadow Cabinet on 23 October 1929, and announced in a statement to the press in mid-November. The statement declared that the new Department would be tasked with conducting research into the growing political complexity of modern industrial, imperial, and social problems. Although there is little evidence over the years that followed that Baldwin sought policy advice from the Department on his own initiative, the press announcement said that the Department would work under his direct control. It also stated that, on his return from South Africa, Chamberlain would become closely involved with the Department and its work. Before that, under the guidance of Party Chairman, J.C.C.

124

Robert Self, The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters, Volume 1: The Making of a Politician, 1915–1920 (London: Routledge, 2017), 143. 125 David Dilks, “Baldwin’s Second Government”, in The Conservatives: A History of their Origins to 1965, ed. Lord Butler (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1977), 316–18. 126 Renwick, Bread For All, 196.

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Davidson, Baldwin’s decision was given organisational form, and Joseph Ball was appointed as the CRD’s first Director.127 Chamberlain had not, in fact, given his consent to any statement about his possible involvement, and his reservations delayed the effective functioning of the Department for some four months. Chamberlain was concerned about how the new body would relate to the Shadow Cabinet, as well as to the Central Office, a body of which he had a very low opinion. He was also apprehensive about the relationship between the Department and a Party leader who had formal authority over it, but who would take no direct interest in its activities. Eventually, however, Chamberlain committed himself to the Department and became its Chairman in March 1930. Shortly before assuming the chairmanship, he wrote that: through my new department I shall have my finger on the springs of policy…We shall be at once an Information Bureau…and a long-term research body…I am setting up a Research into Unemployment and outrelief…I shall have another committee on over-production…another on social and industrial problems, including thrift and co-partnership, and finally another on agriculture.128

Chamberlain was nevertheless careful to recognise Baldwin’s formal relationship with the Department. As he told his sister, Ida, on 22 March 1930, “with immense difficulty we have got S. B. to set up a sort of inner shadow cabinet called the Committee of Business which is to meet regularly and I am arranging to take my instructions from and report to them.”129 At around the same time, he organised the ousting of J.C.C. Davidson as Party Chairman and took over the role himself. There was also a growing recognition over the course of the following year, before he himself resigned the Party Chairmanship, that his dual involvement—with

127

Ball had been an intelligence officer but had become dissatisfied with his MI5 pay and conditions when he was recruited by Party Chairman Davidson in 1927, ostensibly to manage the Party’s literature but also to conduct spying operations against Labour. He became the first Director of the Research Department in 1930. He was a sinister figure, and later still editor of the sometimes anti-Semitic and always anti-Churchill Truth magazine—a devotee beyond the call of duty to Neville Chamberlain and suspiciously sympathetic to the Third Reich. Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (London: Penguin, 2010), 126, 150. 128 Feiling, Neville Chamberlain, 177. 129 Neville Chamberlain MSS, 18/1/68, quoted in John Ramsden, The Making of Conservative Party Policy: The Conservative Research Department Since 1929 (London: Longman, 1980), 42–3.

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Central Office, and the Research Department—was having a markedly beneficial effect on the Party’s handling of its overall affairs. Despite the burdens of his time in office for the rest of the 1930s, he retained his position as Chairman of the Research Department until his death in 1940. Chamberlain’s legacy in this role was later judged by John Ramsden to be of great importance for the fortunes of the Conservative Party.130 When Labour came into office in June 1929, there were more than a million unemployed, with significant regional variations in the unemployment rate: as much as 8 per cent between the South East and the North East, and almost 14 per cent between the South East and Wales. Despite the threat of instability inherent in these statistics, the country was in the midst of a period of relative calm. The arrival of the Great Depression in October 1929, however, presented a significant aggravating factor as export markets collapsed and unemployment soared. Even before the full effects of the Depression became manifest, MacDonald made a determined effort in the King’s Speech on 2 July 1929 to appeal to both the Conservative and Liberal Parties for some form of cross-party support. Referring to “the very serious problems that this country had to face”, he wondered: how far it is possible, without in any way abandoning any of our party positions…to consider ourselves more as a Council of State and less as arrayed regiments facing each other in battle. So far as we are concerned, co-operation will be welcomed.”131

But it was not to be. The British economy had been in a chronic condition since World War I and was now being battered by a worldwide depression. MacDonald’s proposed co-operation might have helped save the day. However, the Government faced steady opposition from the Conservatives, obstruction from the House of Lords, and tepid support from the Liberals. In addition to all this, it fell victim overall to its own political shortcomings. Few governments have entered office with such high hopes and widespread goodwill only to leave, after a relatively short period of time, with so little lamentation from both friends and foes. As the economy crumbled and jobs disappeared, unemployment quickly became Labour’s chief failure. Maurice Hankey, the Cabinet Secretary, wrote in his diary on 6 September 1931 that “we are living just now through the most serious crisis since the war and the future outlook is black.” He blamed the failure of post-war governments to adopt the necessary economic recovery measures and, in particular, Lloyd George’s 130 131

Ramsden, Making of Conservative Party Policy, 42–43. Hansard, HC Deb. 2 July 1929, 5th ser. vol. 229, cols. 64–65.

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irresponsible election speeches about “homes fit for heroes.” This sentiment had compelled each Party leader to declare repeatedly that the standard of living must be maintained, and distracted them from insisting that the public must make the sacrifices necessary to restore the economy’s lost competitiveness.132 It has to be acknowledged, though, that Labour’s economy-fixated Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Snowden, opposed the introduction of large-scale public works programmes and other measures, including the protection of home markets by tariffs, such as that put forward by Sir Oswald Mosley in what came to be known as the “Mosley memorandum.”133 A major factor in the Government’s “limping efforts” to conquer unemployment—one that also applied to the successor National Government—was the existence and cost of unemployment insurance. The great preoccupation was to relieve the economic peril faced by the unemployed, rather than to end unemployment itself. After a dispute about projected cuts in unemployment benefit in August 1931, the Labour Government was left so fatally divided that MacDonald felt that he had no choice but to recommend the formation of a temporary National Government, although this only came into being after a highly unusual “hands-on” intervention by King George V.134 It was accepted by the party leaders that this administration would address the 132

Searle, Country Before Party, 158–59. The “Mosley Memorandum” reflected a Liberal programme drawn up by a group of intellectuals, which included John Maynard Keynes, designed to “reach out to disillusioned social groups unable to identify either with Organised Labour or Big Business, such as technicians and managers.” The Liberals mocked the ancient controversy between individualism and collectivism, between laissez-faire and socialism, as obsolete, and offered instead a national basis for a reformed managed capitalism, a resurrected form of “National Efficiency.” Many believed that the Mosley Memorandum mirrored the new economic analysis of Keynes, since both shared a commitment to raising the level of demand by monetary reform and using the budget as an instrument of economic policy. The Memorandum was received with enthusiasm by Churchill, who had Mosley admitted to “The Other Club”, and by press magnates, Lord Beaverbrook and Lord Rothermere. Mosley was also in touch with Lloyd George, though the Liberal Party’s re-embrace of the orthodox dogmas of retrenchment and Free Trade would have made meaningful co-operation difficult. See Searle, Country Before Party, 154–55. 134 In a meeting at Buckingham Palace on 24 August, the King, “after having put the case in favour of a ‘national government’ for over half an hour, and extracted from Samuel and Baldwin ...promises to serve under MacDonald...then withdrew, leaving the three only ‘to settle the details.’” See Stuart Ball, “The Conservative Party and the Formation of the National Government: August 1931”, The Historical Journal, Vol. 29, No. 1 (March 1986): 179. 133

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national emergency, and at the end of the emergency period would be followed by a general election during which there would be no “coupons” as in 1918, pacts, or other similar arrangements. MacDonald remained as Prime Minister; Snowden continued as Chancellor; and a handful of Liberals rallied to the cause. Almost all the wider Labour Party went into Opposition. It was not a development which the Conservatives desired— indeed, they felt that they had nothing to gain, and much to lose, from an alliance with discredited politicians. Nevertheless, they believed that no other course was open to them if their priorities for settling the financial crisis were to be achieved, principally by cutting the huge unemployment benefit bill to restore confidence in the economy, and by stemming the alarming exodus of overseas gold from London. At a Party meeting at the Kingsway Hall on 28 August, Baldwin’s explanation that there had been no alternative, and his assurance that the introduction of tariffs had been merely delayed and not abandoned, was accepted, albeit without great enthusiasm. The temporary National Government fell at the same hurdle as its predecessor after fewer than three months in office. The Government imposed a cut of 10 per cent in unemployment benefits in September, and then introduced a means-test which, because of the inquisition it involved, was bitterly resented by working people. It also did nothing to cure the underlying malaise. From the Conservative viewpoint, these policies at least stayed the anxieties of those who feared the spread of socialism under a Labour government. For others, it was apparent by the end of the 1920s that it was hardly possible to blame all the country’s accumulated woes on Labour. It was the Conservatives, the predominant party of government throughout the decade, who bore the major responsibility for the high levels of expenditure which were allegedly bankrupting the state. It thus became desirable to involve Labour in some sort of extended national settlement.135 The exhaustion of foreign credit forced the suspension of the Gold Standard, and as the pound fell by more than a quarter on the foreign exchange markets, the entire financial system teetered on the edge of collapse. On 19 September 1931, the Bank of England made frantic efforts to drum up foreign support, but it was unsuccessful. This left the Cabinet with the unsavoury choice between watching Britain’s stock of gold and foreign currencies evaporate, or suspending the obligation to sell gold at a fixed price. It opted for the latter course, so that the pound floated on the exchange markets, falling to a rate of $3.80, and the Bank rate was raised to 6 per cent. Thus, within one month of taking office, a whole era of British

135

Searle, Country Before Party, 161.

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financial policy had come to an end.136 The campaign for the election which followed in October 1931, was, like that of 1924, fought on the basis of economic fear. The National Government—which had been created to save the pound, and had failed—was re-elected by an overwhelming margin to handle its failure. The difference between the elections of October 1931 and October 1924 was that this time there was to continue to be a Labour Prime Minister, with MacDonald as a largely nominal leader since he was essentially the captive of an absolute Conservative majority of votes cast (incidentally, the last election to date in which one party has achieved such a dominant position). Baldwin, typically content to leave to others the task of policymaking, stayed as Lord President until he succeeded MacDonald as Prime Minister in 1935. The most important appointment was that of Chamberlain, an advocate of Protectionism, as Chancellor of the Exchequer in place of the convinced Free Trader, Philip Snowden. Chamberlain had made his position clear in a diary entry on 19 September 1930: There is only one way of redressing it [the adverse trade balance] and that is by a tariff, which Herbert Samuel [Liberal member of the Government and staunch Free Trader] refuses to consider. I should like the P.M.…by a majority to adopt it, to accept Samuel’s resignation…and go to the country on a programme of the full tariff and a free hand.137

The Government adopted a strategy of economic protectionism that was designed to reduce imports and boost home consumption. This two-pronged approach aimed to stimulate production and strengthen the United Kingdom’s competitiveness in world markets. As well as promoting this particular brand of protectionist economics, Chamberlain continued to see the National Government as an effective way of keeping Labour divided. Yet he also recognised that retaining the support of former Labour and Liberal voters after 1931 (and of their representatives in Parliament), necessitated a continuation of progressive reforms and the cultivation of a moderate national image for government policy. Baldwin, too, saw such an approach as necessary to enable a course to be piloted between the extremism of the far left and far right, nascent both in Britain and abroad. Due principally to his vocal opposition to the 1927 Irwin Declaration on India, Churchill was not offered a position in the new Government. Lord Irwin (later Viscount Halifax), Viceroy of India, had returned to a decade136 137

Mowat, Britain Between the Wars, 355–56. Feiling, Neville Chamberlain, 195.

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old declaration by proclaiming that the “natural issue of India’s constitutional progress…is the attainment of dominion status”—this, of course, implied a grant of legal and constitutional equality with Britain. The Declaration launched a fierce struggle within the Conservative Party in which Churchill, “a natural Whig imperialist”138, played a leading and vociferous part, establishing himself as the spokesman of a “peculiarly intransigent form of Tory nationalism.” Influenced as he was by his memories of his army service in the sub-continent in the 1890s, Churchill viewed Indian independence as the start of a process of national decline. Baldwin, meanwhile, warned that if Irwin and his declaration were to be rejected, “then I have finished with my party.”139 After six years and numerous conferences, a solution was found in the imposition of an All-India Federation with, inter alia, elected legislatures in the provinces and reserved powers for the Governor General. Though this fell far short of Dominion status, Churchill would continue his opposition until full independence was granted in 1947.140 Chancellor of the Exchequer was an office Chamberlain was to occupy for the next six years. Immediately after the 1931 election, he masterminded an Abnormal Importations Act as a short-term measure to stem a flood of imports before tariffs could be imposed, as they were in the Import Duties Bill introduced in February 1932. “Tariffs worked as a unifying force among Conservatives, in part because their introduction incorporated a system of imperial preference demanded by some of Baldwin’s most ardent Tory critics.”141 The irony was that Protection was introduced by the Conservatives, who claimed to believe in free enterprise, and opposed by Labour, whose philosophy was based on the idea of a planned economy. The so-called “doctor’s mandate” for lifting Britain out of Depression was believed to be working as the economy started to recover in the course of 1933, though this was probably due more to the general recovery in world trade than to the National Government’s specific policies. Indeed, the disarray which preceded the onset of recovery is attributed by Keith Feiling to the fact that the Government, despite Churchill’s (ironic?) description of it as a Government of “nearly all the talents”, was irresolutely led. Feiling also points to another factor: the ill-distribution of seats between the Coalition partners, which inclined MacDonald, as Prime Minister until 1935, to go further than he might otherwise have done in humouring the

138

Marquand, Britain Since 1918, 96. Marquand, Britain Since 1918, 96. 140 Marquand, Britain Since 1918, 96–97. 141 Cooke, “Neville Chamberlain’s Private Army”, 17. 139

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Liberals.142 Whatever the reason, by 1937 production and employment had reached an all-time peak. According to A.J.P. Taylor, it was “increased consumption by individuals [which] pulled England out of the slump.”143 Given the theme of this study, the question therefore is whether economic improvements allowed for the further extension of the enlightened programme of social reform which Chamberlain had instituted as Minister of Health, a role now filled by Sir E. Hilton Young. Historians make much of the emergence of what they designate “middle opinion” in the 1930s—the advocacy of policies by progressive intellectuals, pressure groups, and “centre” politicians which led to the Labour Party’s post-1945 programme of social reform. As Chancellor of the Exchequer, Chamberlain could do no other than take a cautious approach to the reforms being put forward (and which found finite expression in Labour’s Immediate Programme published in 1937). Yet he did modify the Treasury’s hitherto deflationary policy, to allow some latitude for social amelioration, though, like most of his Party, he believed in evolutionary reform rather than the major extension of State power which informed “middle opinion” proselytising. Thus, when the administration of the unemployment benefit was centralised, as being too controversial a matter to rest with local authorities, it continued to be based on the contributory principle, as were entitlements to health benefits. Means-tests were also introduced for most personal social services. Furthermore, with regard to unemployment, in 1933 Chamberlain established an Unemployment Assistance Board. This was a new statutory commission outside party politics intended to give relief and training to the able-bodied. It utilised a household means-test that was humanised by paying no regard to disability pension, a proportion of savings, or maternity benefit. Chamberlain’s aim was to avoid the danger of relief being put up to auction by the parties at election times. Elsewhere, the government, conscious of growing unrest, under Chamberlain’s guidance passed a Special Measures Act in 1934 to provide additional help to the long-term unemployed in four distressed regions. The work of the Commissioners who were appointed was, however, hindered by Whitehall in-fighting and economic orthodoxy. This meant that in 1936, facing demonstrations of continuing popular disquiet such as the hugely supported Jarrow march, it was felt necessary to pass a Special Areas (Amendment) Act, which took effect in 1937. Ironically, however, like the earlier Act, its effectiveness was blunted—this time by the increasing pressure for spending on rearmaments. 142 143

Feiling, Neville Chamberlain, 198. Taylor, English History, 343.

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The need for overall economy did not, however, prevent substantial improvements in many other areas. In health care, for instance, reductions in infant mortality were achieved in large part through better medical care. A significant development in this respect was the passing in 1936 of the Midwives Act, which established a national midwifery service funded by local government. The legislation was regarded as a personal triumph for Lucy Baldwin, the Prime Minister’s wife, who was a notable campaigner for improvements in maternity care. The changes brought about by the 1929 Local Government Act, discussed earlier in this chapter, had allowed many of the gaps in the system of national insurance to be closed, though many others continued to exist throughout the thirties. For example, wives and mothers received no provision, except at the time of child-bearing. Children between one and five were also left out, and during their school years they were inspected, but seldom treated, by the school medical and dental service. Of the adult population, only wage-earners were included in national health insurance. In 1936, those covered by national health insurance in Great Britain numbered just over 19 million, scarcely half the population of those over the then school-leaving age of fourteen. More generally, however, and arguably more significantly in the longer-term, the 1929 Act had allowed local authorities to convert Poor Law infirmaries into general hospitals admitting members of all classes. Andrew Thorpe describes this as a “very significant development, [providing] the potential for a hospital system which relied neither on charity nor on the Poor Law.” In London, in the years leading up to 1937, the County Council acquired 63 general hospitals with 42,000 beds and 20,000 staff. Furthermore, an emergency hospital service was planned in anticipation of civilian casualties in case of war. In its scope, this service anticipated the formation of the National Health Service more than a decade later.144 One criticism of the national health insurance system is that the objectives of the Ministry of Health, and its local administrators, did not include the welfare of the people as a whole. Instead, objectives were dictated by the paramount importance of saving money, a policy which played into the hands of the approved societies who competed for clients, by highlighting the inconsistences in the scope of the national system. There were fierce disputes, for example, during the debates on the National Health Insurance and Contributory Pensions Act of 1932, over the benefits that were payable (or not) to women when harsh economic circumstances had 144 Andrew Thorpe, Britain in the 1930s: A Deceptive Decade (London: WileyBlackwell, 1992), 111–12.

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led to a great reduction in the number of married women being able to afford membership of an approved society. Against the backdrop of these continuing problems, Gilbert judged that “by the late 1930s, the structure of national health insurance had nearly reached the practicable limits of beneficial and progressive evolution”, and the scene was set for the introduction of a comprehensive health service. For a host of reasons, however, it took almost a further decade for that to become a reality.145 Charles Webster agrees. In his political history of the National Health Service, he concludes that: by the outset of the Second World War…through the mechanisms of the Poor Law, public health, education, and health insurance, central and local government between them provided and financed an ever-increasing range of health services…and that a few of the more affluent and most progressive local authorities were within sight of providing a comprehensive health service.

This statement is used in substantiation of Webster’s broader claim that “it would be an error to regard the NHS as a spontaneous creation” of the post1945 Labour Government.146 Housing had been Chamberlain’s principal preoccupation during his first period as Minister of Health in 1923. By the time that he became Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1931, it had ceased to be a first-rank political question, largely because of the need to concentrate on more pressing matters. Although Wheatley’s Housing (Financial Provisions) Act of 1924 had not by any means solved Britain’s housing problems, it may be considered to have ended the political struggle over “homes for heroes”, which had dominated politics in one way or another since 1918. By the 1930s, the nation had two workable Government-supported housing programmes running side by side, one (Chamberlain’s scheme) oriented towards private enterprise, the other (the Wheatley scheme) focussed on local authority building. The local authorities were now in the business of house building on a permanent basis, and council estates were to become a familiar feature of British domestic life. Nevertheless, although more than two and a half million houses had been built since the First World War, more than half of them without state aid, there was still a need to tackle slum clearance which, working with Minister of Health Hilton Young, Chamberlain addressed in the Housing

145

Gilbert, British Social Policy, 297–304. Charles Webster, The National Health Service: A Political History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 2.

146

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Act of 1935. This Act gave local authorities the statutory duty of examining all houses unfit or likely to become unfit, and taking the necessary action either to clear them or repair them. One element of the slum clearance programme was the parallel need to address overcrowding and insanitary conditions, which evidence showed were causally linked to high rates of infant mortality.147 The problem, however, was that the rate of slum clearance, if not actually outstripping the rate of new builds, meant that the net addition to the national stock of houses which the poorer classes could afford to rent was negligible. This left the poorer section of the population little better housed at the end of the interwar period than it had been at the beginning. Chamberlain’s belief that the reduction in building costs over the post-war years would make profitable the building by private enterprise of houses affordable by the less well-off was simply mistaken.148 Indeed, as Maurice Bruce has observed: It was the shock of what was revealed by evacuation in 1939 that finally brought home to the country…the inadequacy of all that had been done to improve the conditions of a substantial part of the population in the most densely peopled and industrialised areas.149

Other reports of “slatternly women, verminous children sewn into their clothes, families with the eating habits of animals, bed-wetting by grown boys” caused similar levels of alarm.150 Chamberlain was at an age where the weight of the burdens he was imposing upon himself seemed to many to be unwise, and there were those, as he knew, who thought he was becoming over-timid and unenterprising. Yet as he declared in his diary in January 1934, “I know [these charges] are groundless, or I should not have been the one to produce the Unemployment Assistance Board…[or] the slum and over-crowding policy now accepted by the Minister of Health, [and] the sending of commissioners to the derelict 147

In 1936, a local authority census on overcrowding, conducted to a “not-toorigorous standard” by including living as well as sleeping rooms, found that of nearly 9 million working class houses inspected in England and Wales, 3.8 per cent were deemed to be overcrowded. A second count conducted in Leeds, however, which included only rooms used for sleeping, found 21.1 per cent of its houses overcrowded. Over the whole country, such a standard would have shown some 853,000 houses to be overcrowded. Ministry of Health, Housing Act, 1935: Report on the Overcrowding Survey in England and Wales, 1936 (London: HMSO, 1936), discussed by Mowat, Britain Between the Wars, 507. 148 Gilbert, British Social Policy, 197–203. 149 Bruce, The Coming of the Welfare State, 248. 150 Mowat, Britain Between the Wars, 506.

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areas.” Furthermore, these were policies that were tangential to his principal responsibilities in relation to the management of the economy, with the increasing demands placed upon it in relation to the pressing need for rearmament. Indeed, Keith Feiling goes so far as to describe him in his role as Chancellor as “the third apparent figure in the Cabinet but in some vital respects, the first.”151 In June 1935, MacDonald gave up the premiership and was succeeded by Baldwin. Hilton Young was dropped from the Government, but Chamberlain expressed his gratitude for Young’s work; Sir Kingsley Wood entered the Cabinet as the new Minister of Health. If the Labour Party’s post-war nationalisation programme can be regarded as falling under the broad heading of social reform, it is worth noting that in preparation in 1934 for the forthcoming election, Chamberlain asked the newly-formed Conservative Research Department to undertake a wideranging policy review. This exercise would investigate the shape of future relationship between the State and Industry, the limits to be set on the State’s interference, and the dangers that should be avoided. The question of this relationship was a subject which had been much debated in the early 1930s. On consideration of the CRD report by a sub-committee of the Cabinet Conservative Committee chaired by Chamberlain, it was agreed that Government should intervene only where the state of a particular industry was such as to demand reorganisation, and where this could not be achieved by natural forces within a reasonable time. Harold Macmillan’s alternative proposals, which argued that considerable powers of intervention in industry should be given to the Government, were rejected; it was felt that they would set a dangerous precedent for any future Labour Government. This approach informed the activities of the Baldwin and Chamberlain Governments prior to 1939, principally in the cotton and coal sectors.152 In 1931, an attempt had been made in an Education Bill to raise the school leaving age to fifteen. After encountering difficulties with Roman Catholics on the Labour back-benches over regulations for Church schools, this proposal had been rejected by the Lords. Similarly, an Education Bill introduced by the Baldwin Government in 1936 with the same objective was blighted—although not by Parliamentary opposition. The due date for its implementation, 1 September 1939, was superseded by the outbreak of war. One aspect of the Bill that had proved contentious was the provision that in regions where manufacturers required adolescent labour, the leaving age

151

Feiling, Neville Chamberlain, 227. Cooke, “Neville Chamberlain’s Private Army”, 22; see also Ramsden, Making of Conservative Party Policy, 78.

152

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should remain at fourteen. In 1938, a report by a Consultative Committee, chaired by Sir William Spens, master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, went much further than previous reforms by recommending that there be three types of secondary school—grammar, technical, and modern, with “parity of esteem”, and that the school-leaving age be raised to sixteen. The report was rejected by the Government for imposing too great a financial burden at a time when defence spending was the overwhelming priority.153 Though criticised by some historians as reflecting what was already becoming good employer practice, the Holidays with Pay Act of 1938 consolidated matters by giving workers whose minimum rates of pay were fixed by trade boards—the Trade Boards Acts of 1909 and 1918 and the Agricultural Wages (Regulation) Act of 1924—the right to take one week’s holiday with pay per year. This was the culmination of a campaign for paid holidays which the Trade Union Congress had been waging since 1911.154 In October 1935, three months before the expected date, Parliament was dissolved and, after a rather confusing campaign in which domestic issues such as housing and unemployment overshadowed Government calls for rearmament, the National Government was re-elected with a parliamentary majority of 255. The immediate problem facing the Government was how to stop Mussolini’s aggression against Abyssinia, while avoiding armed conflict. Oil sanctions had not worked, and the Hoare-Laval plan, which effectively dispossessed Abyssinian Emperor Haile-Selassie, caused outrage and had to be withdrawn. Mussolini won the war, the Emperor exiled himself in Bath, and matters deteriorated when Germany reoccupied the Rhineland in June 1936. Although Baldwin earned the respect and gratitude of the State by smoothing the way for Edward VIII to abdicate so that he could marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson, his reputation had never recovered from the Hoare-Laval fiasco, and he had not convincingly demonstrated how the diplomacy which he favoured was going to address the tripartite threat of Italy, Germany and Japan. He therefore chose to “lay down his task at a time of his own choosing and of his own free will”—the first Prime Minister since Salisbury to do so—and make way for Chamberlain. It is somewhat ironic that Chamberlain, who had forged his reputation on social issues, would face the unrelenting pressure of foreign

153

Brian Simon, The Politics of Educational Reform 1920–1940 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1974), 125–37. 154 Sandra Dawson, “Working-Class Consumers and the Campaign for Holidays with Pay,” Twentieth-Century British History 18/3 (2007): 277–305.

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affairs while Prime Minister.155 According to Michael Bentley, what he brought to the office of Prime Minister was: a certain self-belief, a serious political intelligence and an inability to delegate which left many of his colleagues feeling excluded and marginalised. A background in business and an ignorance of both France and Germany conspired to darken [his] political horizons, which Churchill in his most rampant phase of warning did nothing to lighten...Churchill loathed most of the current hierarchy for having flirted with protection, winked at state socialism and given way on India.156

Looking at the picture as a whole, it is understandable why the pace of social reform, instituted by Chamberlain during his tenure of the office of Minister of Health between 1924 and 1929, was not sustainable after 1931. It became even less so during Baldwin’s two-year premiership between 1935 and 1937, and then during Chamberlain’s own period as Prime Minister from 1937 up to the outbreak of war. After 1937, the pressure posed by European affairs hindered the development of the Conservative Party as a distinct political force, a state of affairs underlined when Churchill, after becoming Prime Minister in 1941, unavoidably chose to subordinate Party interests to the need to defeat Germany by means of cross-party collaboration. It also leaves as a matter of pure speculation how Conservative social policy thinking would have developed if there had been no war, and if the Party had won the general election due in 1940. What cannot be denied is that the Conservative Party in 1931 and the succeeding years of the decade bore little relationship to its counterpart in 1945. The Party had profited from Ramsay MacDonald’s failure in 1931 to prevent rifts arising within Labour, over how best to tackle the postDepression economic crisis. At this time, Andrew Jones and Michael Bentley argue, the legacy of Bonar Law and Balfour could still be detected in the Party. A clear ideology was not evident, and its approach to government was neither disruptive nor running counter to the concerns of the British public.157 By contrast, those Conservatives who survived the election debacle in 1945 were a very different breed from those who had found themselves isolated in 1939—isolated by attitudes formed over a long period of relatively unchallenged Tory political hegemony, and unconvinced that a Labour revival, foreshadowed by by-election results, needed to be 155

Charmley, A History of Conservative Politics, 99–100. Michael Bentley, “1931–1945: National Government and Churchill Coalition”, in How Tory Governments Fall: The Tory Party in Power Since 1783, ed. Anthony Seldon (London: Fontana, 1996), 296. 157 Jones and Bentley, “Salisbury and Baldwin”, 32–40. 156

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taken seriously. Indeed, by-election results were viewed more as protest votes rather than as warnings of a serious Labour challenge at the next election. The post-1945 Conservative Party stood for the mixed economy, and was much nearer the centre ground of politics. The influence of Labour Ministers in the wartime coalition had exerted a huge influence on public opinion, and predicted an electoral swing to the Left. When this swing took place, it was largely at the expense of pre-war Conservatism, albeit unfairly coloured by the failure of Chamberlain’s appeasement policies. Coalition had produced a new political middle-ground. As Paul Addison observes, “[a]ll three parties went to the polls in 1945 committed to principles of social and economic reconstruction.”158 It was upon this new middle ground that the parties would thereafter compete for power. What, then, were the overall characteristics of Conservative social policy from 1924 to 1939, and did they in any way foreshadow or pave the way for the tone and content of the reconstruction exercises undertaken during the war, and by the Labour Party’s post-war programme which followed their 1945 election victory? With very few exceptions, historians of the Conservative Party share the view that the short-lived Bonar Law Government of 1922–23 was the “limpest” government of the twentieth century. Nor did Law’s successor Stanley Baldwin, seeking as he did to revive Joseph Chamberlain’s idea of protectionism, succeed in overcoming the widespread impression that the Conservatives lacked vision. Baldwin’s reputation recovered after he succeeded Ramsay MacDonald in 1924, since he suspended protectionism (for the time being) and claimed to have embraced “New Conservatism.” Yet his success was due in large part to the programme of social reform pursued by Neville Chamberlain at the Ministry of Health. During the period between the 1924 and 1929 elections, the Party not only enjoyed the support of an overwhelming majority of the middleclass, but had also converted a substantial proportion of the working class, who were attracted by the prospect of prosperity without social upheaval. Following the collapse of the General Strike in 1926, the Trades Disputes Act of 1927 was broadly reassuring in this respect and the legislation for pensions for widows and orphans positively welcomed. Furthermore, as part of a wider package of initiatives designed to stimulate industry, assist the agricultural sector, and revive employment, Neville Chamberlain introduced his plans for Poor Law and local government reform. By the time of the 1929 election, therefore, the Government could take credit for a solid, 158

Paul Addison, The Road to 1945: British Politics and the Second World War (London: Pimlico, 1977), 14.

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forward-looking record of achievement, and offer the prospect of further reforms in the areas of maternity benefits and child welfare, as well as on slum clearance. In the event, however, it could not outbid the utopian schemes offered by the Labour Party, notwithstanding Stuart Ball’s view that the Conservatives reached the summit of their authority and value towards the end of the decade.159 Despite fighting a tough and shrewd election campaign and Baldwin’s personal popularity, a Liberal revival— Ball speaks of the effect of Lloyd George’s stunts upon a credulous electorate—facilitated Labour’s election victory. Labour took office as a minority government for the second time with 287 seats to the Conservatives’ 260. The Liberals, with 59 MPs, held the balance of power.160 Once the Labour Government had self-destructed, however, and Liberalism had disintegrated in the October 1931 election, Baldwin’s government was able to absorb and deploy the social instincts of both parties. Not surprisingly, however, given the deteriorating international situation, its domestic programme was vulnerable to the increasing demands of national security, although it enjoyed the feel-good factor generated by the economic boom. Nevertheless, if Baldwin was the chief rhetorician of reassuring Conservatism, though rarely going beyond references to healing class divisions, Chamberlain was still its chief policy-maker. By bringing to his task as Chancellor all the orthodoxies approved by the Treasury, he displayed a zeal which Baldwin lacked. Chamberlain believed in self-help rather than dependency on State support, while always conscious of what the State could do to help people help themselves. With the abandonment of the Gold Standard in 1931, the introduction of protective tariffs in 1932 and the Special Areas legislation of the same year freed the home economy from its shackles in a departure from the orthodox view that employment levels could not be boosted by State borrowing and expenditure.161 159

Stuart Ball, “1916–29”, in How Tory Governments Fall, ed. Seldon, 273. Ball, “1916–29”, 275. 161 Michael Bentley’s version of events is that the national government “groped its way forward.” As he sees it, “the Tories had an ideology for [handling] national crisis drawn from the economic downturn of the 1870s, the threats from aggressors abroad in the age of imperialism, and the experience of the First World War when they emerged as champions of British identity.” At the same time, “some of them had an emerging commitment to an ideal of state involvement in the ills of society, plus a willingness to tweak economic controls when doing so seemed necessary in order to preserve an organic sense of social well-being.” These ideals allowed the National Government to be seen as an agency of mission, bringing a new urgency and policy approaches that would have important implications for the future, possibly laying the foundations of centrism and the welfarism of the later 1940s. See Bentley, “1931–1945”, 299. 160

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Despite spending restraints and the rejection of Socialist solutions to social problems, there was a notable consolidation of social policy under Baldwin and Chamberlain. In the opinion of Ann Spokes: The years between the two wars were ones of tremendous expansion of the social services. The only time when there was a serious check on progress was in the immediate period of crisis after the 1929–31 period of Socialist Government…By April 1939, [even] a leading Scottish Socialist (Sir Patrick Dollan) was able to say, “I know of no country where the Social Services are so high, so varied and so well supported as they are in this country.”162

Alistair Cooke places matters in a broader context, and in terms that have a distinct bearing on the conclusions reached in the final chapter of this book. The degree to which, and the manner in which, the social services had been developed by 1939, he says, “pointed the way to a Tory welfare state in which socialism would play no part but would have been the theme of Chamberlain’s manifesto for the election he planned to hold in 1940.”163 Health insurance cover had increased significantly between 1920 and 1938, as had unemployment insurance. The unemployed who had exhausted their entitlement to benefits had been relieved from public funds, rather than being thrown automatically on to the Poor Law. Poor Law hospitals had been transferred to local authorities; the Housing Act of 1923 had resulted in the building of nearly half a million houses; and more than a million slumdwellers had been rehoused. If all of this was not progressive in revolutionary terms, it certainly represented an evolutionary progress towards later social improvements. The overriding dilemma of the period from which Chamberlain could not escape was illustrated by the outcome of the 1926 Royal Commission on National Health Insurance. It recommended that the ultimate solution for health services would be to divorce them entirely from the insurance principle, and finance them entirely from public funds. The large amounts of additional public expenditure which this would require, however, rendered it unfeasible in the immediate future. Conservative politicians, such as Chamberlain, therefore continued to stress the need for “voluntary contributions to social policy”, creating the concept of a “mixed

162

Ann Spokes, “The Social Services,” in The Conservative Opportunity, eds. Lord Blake and John Patten (London: Macmillan Press,1976), 109. 163 Alistair Cooke, A Party of Change: A Brief History of the Conservatives (London: Conservative Research Department, 2008), 21.

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economy of welfare.”164 Society had to demonstrate that it was willing and capable—by acting through employers with a sense of social responsibility— of bringing pressure on exploitative employers to pay their workers a living wage. Only if such pressure was disregarded should the State be prepared to act. For these reasons, Beveridge would simply not have been acceptable under Baldwin or Chamberlain. At the same time, it was the fact and cost of high unemployment which made the Party “reluctant to devote ever increasing resources to defence in the 1930s in response to Winston Churchill’s demands, though by 1938 Chamberlain had raised defence spending to unprecedented levels.”165 It was Asa Briggs who pointed out the link between war and welfare, and how the former could be instrumental in changing attitudes towards the latter. The Second World War had barely begun when thoughtful Conservatives became aware of the seismic shifts that were taking place in the public’s view of the requirements for social provision in post-war Britain.166 Whether a new approach could be built on the existing state of affairs was a moot question.167 After all, Beveridge himself was to 164

Green, Ideologies, 272–73. The “mixed economy of welfare” quotation is drawn by Green from Jane Lewis, The Voluntary Sector, the State and Social Work in Britain: The Charity Organisation Society/Family Welfare Association Since 1869 (Aldershot: Edward Elgar Publishing, 1995), 3. 165 Cooke, A Party of Change, 21. 166 The Lloyd George Coalition had been deflected from its intentions to build on its pre-war social engineering by adverse post-war economic conditions and by special interests. According to Seldon, “the principal difference between the pre- and post1939 welfare state was that before the war it was limited in scale, relatively cheap and restricted to the poor or unfortunate. The war revolutionised attitudes and subsequently it was regarded as the right of all, regardless of means, to have a basic level of services. The question was whether the Conservatives, when returned to power, would accept this new comprehensive version of the welfare state” (a question dealt with in Chapter Seven of this book). Anthony Seldon, “Conservative Century” in Seldon and Ball, Conservative Century, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994) 44. 167 An elaborate theory about the links between war and welfare and the effects of war on government expenditure, including that on the social services, was advanced in the 1960s by Alan T. Peacock and Jack V. Wiseman in The Growth of Public Expenditure in the United Kingdom (London: Allen and Unwin, 2nd revised edition, 1967). They contended that in peacetime people press for increased spending on social and other services, but are reluctant to provide the money to pay for it. War, however, which requires unavoidable increases in national expenditure, necessarily adjusts people’s tolerance of taxation. This adjustment allows governments to embark on welfare projects which would previously have been thought to be unaffordable. Moreover, wars tend to result in the transfer of responsibility for

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pay tribute in his report to what had already been achieved when he described the existing system of health and unemployment benefits and pensions as not “surpassed and hardly rivalled in any other country in the world.”168 Indeed, Anthony Seldon has written that “[e]ven Beveridge… could not decide whether his…report was revolutionary or a natural evolution from the past.”169 When it appeared, however, his report was taken as calling for a completely new start, rather than for a process of evolutionary building on what was already in place. At the same time, the Socialists were busy spreading the fear that any future Tory government would inevitably cut social services. This meant that in order to persuade their Party to adopt the more caring and interventionist approach which would be required after the war, groups such as the Tory Reform Committee began to air their progressive opinions in public. The many-sided struggle they faced to gain a hearing is dealt with in the next chapter, together with other factors which influenced the outcome of the 1945 election. I want the last words in this chapter, however, to give welldeserved credit to the achievements of the Baldwin/Chamberlain years in the area of social reform. David Marquand expresses my feelings almost exactly: Baldwin and Chamberlain used to get a bad press from left-inclined historians but now that the dust of old battles has settled it is clear that they stand as high in the pantheon of reforming ministers as Asquith and Lloyd George. They did not achieve full social citizenship but by the eve of the Second World War the road towards it was open.170

expenditure from local levels to central governments, thus increasing the impulse for state initiatives. The applicability of this theory to the developments over the period under study is self-evident. 168 Quoted by Ann Spokes in “The Social Services” in Blake and Patten, eds., The Conservative Opportunity, 110. 169 Seldon in Seldon and Ball, Conservative Century, 44. 170 Marquand, Britain Since 1918, 90.

CHAPTER FOUR TOWARDS RECONSTRUCTION

The question of the precise roots of the social policies implemented by the post-war Labour Government has aroused considerable dispute over the years. Did these policies emerge de novo, when the vast Labour majority realised that the aspirations of many of its members could now be realised? Or were they the natural outcome of the work done by the Coalition Government during the war? Or, looking even further back into the interwar period, were they yet another stage in a process of social amelioration which could be traced back to the measures instituted by the Conservative Governments, and particularly to those devised by Neville Chamberlain during his time as Minister of Health between 1924 and 1929? Were the pre-war, wartime, and post-war periods separate and distinctive in their approaches to social reform? Or was there a traceable thread of continuity— albeit one interrupted by the war itself and the financial challenges that it posed—from the 1920s to the second half of the 1940s? Kenneth Harris has offered a nuanced answer to this problem: Owing to the number and influence of active socialists in the government or in the upper ranks of the temporary civil service, and to the strong socialist commitment of the trade union leaders in some of the basic industries, the solution to the nation’s wartime planning problems was frequently coloured, if not fashioned, by socialist attitudes or objectives. Yet many of the wartime currents which flowed in the direction of a welfare state came from Liberal, Conservative, and non-political sources and emanated much less from theories about social organisation than from a feeling that the poverty, ill-health and injustices of the twenties and thirties could, and should, be eliminated, if not during the war, at least after the war was over…Many emotional currents mingled with the rational to produce the great broad steady wave that bore Britain towards the welfare state far more effectively than any government of any complexion could have managed.171

For many years the orthodox view was that advanced by Richard Titmuss in the 1950s—that the war itself and the formation of a coalition 171

Kenneth Harris, Attlee (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982), 216–17.

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government to focus the national will had stimulated the emergence of a new political consensus on the need for social reform.172 This was a view still supported by Paul Addison more than twenty years later, when he claimed that war had generated the agenda for the creation of what had come to be called “the Welfare State.” Since then, however, further research has indicated that the degree of consensus achieved during the war had been grossly overstated by these two post-war historians. If such challenges to the post-war orthodoxy are to be taken seriously, therefore, a detailed examination is necessary of the extent to which the reconstruction work of Chamberlain’s Government of National Unity and that of the Churchill Coalition which succeeded it built, deliberately or not, on existing foundations—or, conversely, whether the post-1945 programmes were simply natural extensions of the reconstruction ideas developed during the war years. The most appropriate way of considering these questions seems, to me, to be to examine how the Coalition Government actually approached the need to tackle the problems which would eventually be posed by postwar reconstruction. Was there any sort of common understanding between the members of the Coalition Government itself, and between them and the majority of politicians of all parties outside the Government, about the sorts of solutions which had become manifest in the 1930s but which were unresolved on the outbreak of war in 1939? A critical starting point in considering such questions has, I believe, to be an understanding of how the parties were represented in Parliament when the successive Chamberlain and Churchill Governments were formed, together with the representation of the parties in the Governments themselves. In general terms, times of crisis expose Government inefficiency to political attack on a far greater scale than in more stable periods. Crises also focus attention on national unity, shaming critics of the government as guilty of “rocking the boat or lining up with the enemy or stabbing the troops

172

Richard Titmuss, Problems of Social Policy (London: HMSO, 1950). This “magisterial account…would make canonical the interpretation that there had indeed been a sea-change in the British outlook—first as the mass evacuation of women and children from the main cities brought the social classes into a far closer mutual understanding than there had ever been before, then as the months of stark and dangerous isolation after Dunkirk created an impatient, almost aggressive mood decrying privilege and demanding ‘fair shares’ for all…[T]hese two circumstances led to a widespread desire for major social and other reforms of a universalist egalitarian nature.” David Kynaston, Austerity Britain, 1945–51 (London: Bloomsbury, 2007), 40.

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in the back.”173 At the outbreak of war in September 1939, the Conservative Government elected in 1935 was still in office; Neville Chamberlain had succeeded Baldwin as Prime Minister in 1937. The next election was not due until 1940 which, before the prospect of war became all but unavoidable, Labour had looked like losing (again), probably by a large margin. The Conservative Party had a large Parliamentary majority, having won 386 seats in the 1935 election, which gave it a majority of 158 seats. The Labour Party, conversely, had won only 154 seats in the election. When war was declared, Chamberlain restructured his Government as a Government of National Unity, bringing in representatives of the small National Liberal and National Labour Parties, but excluding Labour and Liberal Party MPs. The Labour Party Executive at a meeting on 10 May 1940 had declined to serve under Chamberlain. The Labour Party was therefore the formal Opposition, though the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) had agreed to support the Government in its conduct of the war in return for the Government’s undertaking to keep the Opposition well supplied with information. To this end, Labour’s Parliamentary Committee members were linked to particular Ministries; for example, A. V. Alexander covered the Admiralty, while Hugh Dalton covered the Air Ministry. Some Labour MPs, however, including Herbert Morrison, argued from the very outbreak of war that the PLP should not support the Chamberlain Government, but should work to secure its resignation in order to obtain a more dynamic leadership. Chamberlain resigned as Prime Minister following the Norway debate in May 1940, and his government—which had lasted only eight months—was replaced by Churchill’s Coalition Government, which boasted a greater breadth of representation. “Ironically...the crisis of confidence in the conduct of war which provoked the revolt [against Chamberlain] was about the [failed] defence of Norway for which Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty in Chamberlain’s Cabinet, was directly responsible.”174 In truth, the Labour Party was not, at this time, committed to Churchill in any sort of personal capacity. Rather its principal aim was to achieve the destruction of the detested Chamberlain Government, excoriated in newspapers such as the Daily Mirror which would never forgive Chamberlain and the “Men of Munich” for what they saw as their craven appeasement of Nazi Germany. Indeed, the Labour Party might well have supported a government under Lord Halifax, who was highly respected and 173

Robert M. Punnett, Front-Bench Opposition: The Role of the Leader of Opposition, the Shadow Cabinet, and Shadow Government in British Politics (London: Heineman, 1973), 403–04. 174 John M. Lee, The Churchill Coalition 1940–1945 (London: Batsford, 1980), 16.

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seen as a “liberal consensual” figure, with Churchill serving as Minister of Defence. The dilemma which Labour faced was how to react to the national emergency: should it maintain a normal oppositional role, in order that the Government’s mistakes could be revealed and criticised? Or should it simply refrain from criticism in the interests of national unity? Although various elements in the Party arrived at different conclusions, the solution was found—despite protests from some trade unions and Labour byelection candidates—in an extension of the existing truce. Both the Labour and Liberal parties agreed to enter into formal coalition with the new Conservative Government, without seeking to impose awkward conditions as the price of co-operation. In fact, the event that probably turned matters in Churchill’s favour was the German attack on France on 9 May 1940, which led the annual Labour Party conference to vote by 241,300 votes against 170,000 votes not to oppose entry into the new Churchill administration. In the same spirit, Greenwood, Dalton, and Morrison, who had all been nominated to stand against Attlee in the annual PLP leadership election, chose not to force the issue. Adoption of the electoral truce, however, did not prevent the production in April 1940 of a comprehensive statement of Labour’s aims. The statement, entitled Labour’s Home Policy, examined the opportunities, both short-term and long-term, presented by “the new situation.” It emphasised that the planning and controls introduced as wartime measures would still be needed in peacetime, and highlighted the need for social reform as a means of maintaining morale. The message was repeated in the 1942 publication, The Old World and the New Society: A Report on the Problems of War and Peace, which was drafted for a Central Committee on Problems of Post-War Reconstruction by Harold Laski.175 “The post-war world”, it stated, “must guarantee full employment, social security, reconstruction, a reform of education and the establishment of a National Health Service.”176 As a preparation for Beveridge, it could not have been more prescient. Though Labour maintained a “fiction” of Opposition, albeit under the leadership of safe figures nearing the end of their careers—H.B. LeesSmith (to December 1941), F.W. Pethick-Lawrence (December 1941 to March 1942) and A. Greenwood (March 1942 onwards)—there was, in effect, no formal Opposition. In a debate in the House of Commons on 21

175

Labour Party (Great Britain), The Old World and a New Society: A Report on the Problems of War and Peace (London: Labour Party, 1942). 176 Thorpe, A History of the British Labour Party, 97.

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May 1940, the Speaker ruled that “the present circumstances” being, as he saw them: unprecedented, it cannot be said that there is now an opposition in parliament in the hitherto accepted meaning of the words; namely a party in Opposition to the Government from which an alternative Government could be formed…I think [therefore that] the arrangement which would most nearly conform to the custom of the House…would be that an ex-Minister outside the present Government, that is, an ex-Minister of any party, could be, if he chose, entitled to sit on the Front Opposition Bench.177

The statement, although it was generally accepted, did not please every Member of the House. James Maxton, for example, (MP for Bridgeton, Glasgow, leader of the far-left faction of the Independent Labour Party, a declared pacifist and prominent activist in the Red Clydeside movement), asserted that “if the Opposition is to be abolished, then we are on the Reichstag level at once.”178 Public and political support for the new Government was, however, overwhelming—even if there was some speculation about the longer-term consequences of co-operation. Different factions saw different advantages, and possible disadvantages, in the existence of the Coalition. Some believed that the level of State interference necessary to mobilise national resources would inevitably result in some permanent form of socialism—that the “warfare state” would lead to a “welfare state”—while others worried that it would undermine the ownership of private property and, moreover, that extended coalition beyond the end of the war would destroy the partisan nature of British politics. In general terms, however, the existence of coalition made it easier for those who had been associated with pre-war political agitation to support the Government.179 The Coalition Government remained in office until May 1945, after which Churchill headed a “Caretaker” Government until the general election in July. Churchill’s first War Cabinet consisted of 20 members— 15 Conservatives (initially including Chamberlain, who served until just before his death in November 1940), 4 senior Labour Party members, and 1 Liberal. The character of this Cabinet was thus in strict accordance with the balance of parties in the House of Commons. The wider Ministry, including the War Cabinet, numbered 223. The Coalition was created to unify all interests in the nation, regardless of the number of parliamentary seats which the different parties held. Churchill himself was to all intents and purposes without party affiliation, commanding respect principally for his 177

Hansard, HC Deb. 21 May 1940, 5th ser. vol. 361, col. 28. Hansard, HC Deb. 21 May 1940, 5th ser. vol. 361, col. 31. 179 Lee, The Churchill Coalition, 12–16. 178

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deep opposition to Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement and his tireless campaigning for rearmament. Yet what it is of vital importance in terms of this study is that the Government was still essentially a Conservative-led Government—with all that the name means in relation to the persistence of internal attitudinal disparities about how social questions should be approached. Indeed, in the broadest possible terms, throughout the life of the Coalition Government, the “Conservative desire to extend the pre-war pattern of services [beyond the end of the war]…contrasted sharply with Labour’s aim of a radical new system forming…the essential components of a welfare state.”180 Nevertheless, it is indisputable that the Churchill Coalition became a genuine partnership, in large part because the Conservatives ceded a great measure of initiative to the Labour Party in relation to the oversight of home affairs. The Labour Left did not accept this situation without persistently expressing the view that by entering the Coalition, their leaders had “sold out” to the Conservative Party machine. As evidence of the depth of this partnership, however, Paul Addison points to the extent to which all three parties in the Coalition contributed to wartime social reform planning. The Conservatives were represented by R.A. Butler and Henry Willink, who led on education and health policies. Keynes and Beveridge represented the Liberals, while Greenwood was handed a ministerial brief for reconstruction.181 These observations form part and parcel of Addison’s support for the view that the war inaugurated an era of consensus—a position which is examined in detail in Chapter Six. One somewhat extreme example of the problems involved in settling the membership of the Coalition, and achieving a necessary and acceptable balance of interests, arose from the appointment in January 1942 of Sir Stafford Cripps as Minister of Supply, outside the War Cabinet. Cripps had recently returned from Russia, where he had been British Ambassador and was believed by many to have single-handedly brought Russia into the war on the side of the Allies. His extreme form of left-wing politics, however, was not appealing to many in the Labour Party, let alone to Conservatives, because of the damage caused to relations between the two countries by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the Russo-Finish war. Josef Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, went so far as to call Cripps “Stalin’s emissary in London.”182 During his period as Ambassador, 180

Kevin Jefferys, “British Politics and Social Policy during the Second World War,” Historical Journal, Vol. 30, No. 1 (March 1987): 131. 181 Addison, The Road to 1945, 165–66. 182 Peter Clarke, The Cripps Version: The Life of Sir Stafford Cripps (London: Allen Lane, 2002), 219.

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however, Cripps had formed the impression that the absence of good AngloSoviet relations was actually the fault of the unreceptive elite in British politics. He was distressed by Beaverbrook’s appointment as Minister of Production with a seat in the War Cabinet. Cripps had himself worked in a similar capacity during the First World War and made it clear to Churchill, in a somewhat acerbic exchange of letters, that he would not act as a subordinate to an “erratic and idiosyncratic Beaverbrook”, but would be a “frank and helpful critic” from outside the Government. Yet the effect on public opinion of a radio talk he gave, in which he drew a comparison between the sacrifices and hardships being endured by the Russians, and the relative comfort of those listening to his broadcast “by their firesides”, taken together with the decline in public morale occasioned by the catastrophic fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942, left Churchill with little choice but to bring him into the War Cabinet, ostensibly as “new blood.” In February 1942, therefore, a Cabinet reshuffle saw Cripps appointed as Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons. He was so popular at the time that only Eden outscored him in a public opinion poll as the favoured successor as leader of the War Cabinet should Churchill, for any reason, find himself unable to carry on. On Cripps’ appointment, Attlee (who had filled the role of Lord Privy Seal) was made Deputy Prime Minister. Beaverbrook, Churchill’s principal ally, refused a post outside the War Cabinet and resigned. His influence was no longer significant, though he remained an intimate of Churchill throughout the war while continuing to disparage Cripps in the columns of the Express Group of newspapers. Curiously, after entering the War Cabinet, Cripps seemed to adapt quickly to the realities of power and records show few interventions from him thereafter on the question of relations with Russia. Instead, he became involved in an attempt to solve the constitutional deadlock which had arisen with India, but his lack of success harmed his reputation. Cripps’s standing further deteriorated when, as the war began to turn in Britain’s favour in the autumn of 1942, he chose to write to Churchill to record his fundamental disagreement over defence and his proposal of a “drastic overhaul of the defence machinery.”183 This poor timing, and the growing public view that he had become ineffectual and little more than another “yes-man”, gave Churchill the opportunity to demand his resignation from the War Cabinet, after which he served as Minister of Aircraft Production. Ironically, one of his last acts as Lord Privy Seal was to announce the publication date of the Beveridge Report. Had he

183

Addison, The Road to 1945, 210.

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become involved in the processing of this report, he might have been in a better position to apply his strong left-wing convictions.184 Considering the record of the Coalition Government throughout its whole period in office in relation to its attitude to social reform, it is possible to identify three broad stages.185 For the first two years after its formation in 1940, its energies were directed almost exclusively towards the war effort. Sensitive domestic issues which might threaten the unity of the Coalition— and indeed its leadership, Churchill’s position being initially far from firm—were deliberately avoided, though war concerns could not entirely obscure the fact that the absence of major domestic initiatives during this period clearly reflected the mood of the Conservative majority in Parliament, where Tory back-benchers were determined to limit, wherever possible, the influence of Labour Ministers. Nevertheless, the political transformation which occurred during 1940–41 as a result of the forced collectivism necessary to marshal the country’s resources has been seen, by historians such as Paul Addison, as “Socialism by default.”186 This collectivism, as well as the presence of Labour Ministers in the War Cabinet—whose views were well known—gave rise to the early emergence of an expectation, reflected in the press, for the creation of a New Jerusalem when the war had been won. The second stage began with the appointment, in July 1941, of Sir William Beveridge to chair a Committee to “undertake, with special reference to the inter-relation of the Schemes, a survey of the existing national Schemes of social insurance and allied services, including Workmen’s Compensation, and to make recommendations.” Publication of the Committee’s Report, which gave the need for social reform an entirely new impetus, took place in December 1942 and led to the creation of a new Ministry of Reconstruction under Lord Woolton in 1943. As Paul Addison has noted:

184

Addison, The Road to 1945, 194–210. Michael Bentley’s pithy summary of the three stages runs as follows. “First, the Tory Party need not talk about politics at all: the priority was national survival. Second, if and when the war became more manageable...the Tories could talk about the future rather than the past and attempt a reconstruction strategy à la Lloyd George which might give them a sustained period of post-war power. Third, they ought to be able to find an appropriate moment to stage a khaki election and capitalise on their tenure of power on the way to victory.” Bentley, “1931–1945”, 307. 186 Cockett, Thinking the Unthinkable, 58. 185

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The historian of social administration finds in the Beveridge Report the blueprint of the post-war welfare state in Britain. The political historian sees it also as a brilliant coup by one man, which at once synthesised the pressures for a more progressive capitalism, and jolted all three parties into accepting the resulting formula as the basis of a new post-war consensus.187

Yet the establishment of the new Ministry did not guarantee immediate (or even agreed) programmes of social reform, with concerns over unrealisable financial expectations particularly prominent. In this respect, Lord Woolton’s comment that the balance of forces on the Reconstruction Committee charged with taking the Beveridge proposals forward was “a mixture of Conservatism and Socialism” was clearly significant.188 In short, whatever consensus the Committee might have reached has come to be seen as “artificial.” In due course, however, pressure for a greater degree of commitment to the implementation of Beveridge became irresistible, particularly after the biggest anti-Government vote of the war period in a debate on the Catering Wages Bill, and criticism at the Conservative Party’s first wartime conference in 1943. This pressure eventually led to the publication, in September 1944, of a White Paper committing the Government to Beveridge-style reforms, an event which marked the beginning of the third stage in the continuing development of the Coalition’s attitude to the need for social reform. Churchill’s reluctant agreement to establish a Reconstruction Committee in November 1943, to be chaired by a Minister for Reconstruction who would have a seat in the Cabinet, had been more or less wrung out of him by Clement Attlee. Under strong pressure from his Labour Party colleagues, and supported by mounting numbers of Conservatives and Liberals, Attlee had insisted that decisions about post-war planning should not be postponed on the excuse that, at the time, post-war conditions were as yet unclear. Kevin Jefferys describes Churchill’s approach to reconstruction at this stage of the war as “lukewarm”, and quotes Hugh Dalton’s opinion that he was “allergic to post-war policy”—an attitude shared by his staunch Tory and virulent anti-Socialist ally, Lord Beaverbrook.189 In Churchill’s view, interim decisions could be taken only on the basis of the best estimate of post-war conditions. As Lord Butler recorded, “The crippling quantities of expense [which would be required] were much in the minds of my

187

Addison, The Road to 1945, 211. Earl of Woolton, The Memoirs of the Rt. Hon. the Earl of Woolton (London: Cassell, 1959), 276, quoted in Jefferys, “British Politics and Social Policy”, 125. 189 Jefferys, “British Politics and Social Policy”, 125. 188

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Coalition colleagues when they came to consider…the problems of postwar reconstruction.”190 Given that Churchill’s time was being largely taken up by overseas conferences intended to harmonise wartime policies with Britain’s allies, Attlee, as Lord President of the Council, was effectively in charge of domestic policy. Churchill anticipated extending the tenure of the Coalition Government for a considerable period after the war, and it seemed appropriate to defer to this period the sorts of deliberations for which the Cabinet was pressing. Attlee, however, insisted that there were non-party issues, (particularly relating to trade and industry) which needed urgent resolution. Eventually, Churchill came to see that he had no choice but to accede to Attlee’s demands, but his promises were lukewarm. Churchill’s stance did not satisfy Attlee, and Churchill asked him for a list of four or five major projects on which early progress might be made. Attlee provided a list and, in a memorandum entitled “War Transition—Peace”, Churchill specified his five urgent post-war priorities. These were a demobilisation scheme; food; the export trade; the conversion of industry from wartime to peacetime production; and the provision of employment for returning servicemen. He made it clear, however, that whatever work was done on them during the present period, specific commitments to post-war implementation should be avoided.191 Attempting to make the best, therefore, out of what he clearly regarded as a premature step, Churchill initially proposed Lord Beaverbrook as chairman of the new Committee, but when Attlee pointed out that such an appointment would only be made “over Ernest Bevin’s dead body”, he agreed instead to the appointment of Lord Woolton. Woolton was a businessman and a political outsider, although Churchill believed him to be anti-Socialist. He had been performing successfully as Minister of Food, and was acceptable to Attlee, who had known him as a young man when they had both been welfare workers. Despite eventual agreement over the chairmanship of the Committee, Churchill was nevertheless bothered (as he wrote in a note to Attlee but which he did not, apparently, send) by the fact that the Committee, whose members were selected on a quota basis, was going to be dominated by “a solid mass of four socialist politicians of the highest quality and authority, three of whom are in the War Cabinet, working as a team.” This would be to the detriment of the Conservative appointees, who were largely non-Party or who had little experience of

190

Lord Butler, The Art of the Possible: The Memoirs of Lord Butler (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973), 126. 191 Harris, Attlee, 225–26.

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Party views and attitudes. Kenneth Harris judges that during “the First World War he [Churchill] faced the social implication of the military effort; in the Second he regarded the military effort as a “warrior only.” Moreover, “[f]ed on report and gossip by Brendan Bracken, [he] believed that socialists in high places were losing no opportunity of using the war to build a socialist Britain.”192 In Lord Butler’s view, “Sir John Anderson was its most influential member...Attlee, [Ernest] Bevin and [Herbert] Morrison [were] regular attenders from the Labour side, and ‘Bobbety’ Cranborne, Oliver Lyttelton, the Prof [Lord Cherwell], and I [were] the principal Conservatives.”193 As it happened, Attlee himself was opposed to the Committee attempting ambitious strides forward, as it might cause splits between the members or result in “vague compromises” which neither side would be able to defend to their parties in the House. Ironically, Attlee could not have foreseen that one of the difficulties which would plague the Committee was disagreement between his own Party colleagues. There had, in fact, been a previous and somewhat half-hearted attempt to put machinery in place to tackle the inevitable problems of postwar reconstruction. At the end of 1940, Churchill had moved Arthur Greenwood, Minister without Portfolio, from his job in charge of war production, to take responsibility for studying the issues that would undoubtedly arise when the war was over. In doing so, however, Churchill presumed that the Coalition would continue for about three years after the end of the war, and would, during this time, put forward practical measures of advance in “four or five great spheres of action.”194 In a memorandum circulated in February 1941, after the first meeting of the Committee that he chaired, Greenwood identified every possible goal which he thought his Committee should consider. Amongst the economic and social problems listed in the memorandum were, unsurprisingly, the stabilisation of employment, the reform and consolidation of social services, and reform of the educational system. The Committee, however, had no formal powers and could only seek to build on work which individual Government Departments were already processing. Taken together with the sad fact of Greenwood’s failing powers (he struggled with alcohol) and his inability to tackle the administrative challenges posed by such a situation, it is not surprising that his Committee made faint progress. 192

Harris, Attlee, 217–18. Butler, The Art of the Possible, 126. Sir John Anderson had left the Civil Service when elected as a National Independent MP in 1938. 194 Winston S. Churchill, The Unrelenting Struggle (London: Cassell, 1943), 45–46, quoted in Addison, The Road to 1945, 167. 193

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Greenwood’s initial appointment and subsequent removal in February 1942 were widely seen as signs that, at this early stage of the war, reconstruction was accorded a very low priority. What underlines the tragedy of Greenwood’s decline is that it was “he who, as deputy leader, standing in for an ill Attlee in the Commons debate on the eve of war, had been urged by Leo Amery from the government benches to ‘[s]peak for England, Arthur.’”195 To Greenwood’s further credit, in his time as Minister for Reconstruction, in June 1941 he offered Sir William Beveridge the job of chairing “an interdepartmental committee on the coordination of social insurance.” It is however worth noting at this point that “the supreme irony of the [eventual] success of the Beveridge Report was that Beveridge [had been pushed into the chairmanship] because Bevin, who was said to find him patronising and officious, wished to remove him from the Ministry of Labour where he aspired to become the director general of manpower.”196 While all of this was happening—or not happening—and given that before publication of the Beveridge Report the House of Commons as such was disinclined to devote little of its time to debating the problems of reconstruction, the individual parties to the Coalition were developing their own ideas of what the post-war world should look like. By far the most cohesive approach was that taken by the Labour Party. Its work was made possible, according to Churchill in a speech made during the 1945 election campaign, by the fact that Labour activists, principally trade unionists, had been in reserved occupations at home during the war. Conversely, Conservative Party agents and activists had been in the armed forces. Set against this, however, is the fact that Labour Party members harboured greater concerns than their Conservative counterparts about what might be possible in the field of social reform when the war was over. As Harold Laski, LSE professor and future chairman of the Labour Party, noted in his book, Reflections on the Revolution of our Time— compiled during the early years of the war, but unfinished before the Beveridge Report appeared—“we cannot, in any ultimate sense, win this war unless we make the idea of a more just society a part of the actual policy by which it is won.”197 With this statement Laski expressed a viewpoint shared by the likes of Aneurin Bevan, Alice Bacon, and Jennie Lee, the principal left-wingers who had remained outside the Government. They had also served on a Party committee under the chairmanship of Emmanuel 195

Nicholas Timmins, The Five Giants: A Biography of the Welfare State (London: HarperCollins, 1995), 37. 196 Lee, The Churchill Coalition, 121. 197 Harold Laski, Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1943), 195.

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Shinwell, advocating post-war social and economic transformation. Laski believed that the vice of all coalitions was “postponement”, and deplored the tendency to think of reconstruction as an “after-war” problem. He argued provocatively that: “the continuance of coalition government ought to depend on the terms which Churchill could offer the Labour Party.”198 These initiatives were matched on the Conservative side, though much less effectively, by the activities of the Tory Reform Committee, and by the creation of a Post-War Problems Central Committee (PWPCC). In July 1941, a week after he had been appointed as President of the Board of Education, “Rab” Butler was invited by the General Director of the Conservative Central Office to become chairman of a small committee intended to examine the question of the Tory attitude to post-war policy. This committee became the PWPCC. Although a few self-styled Young Turks on the progressive wing of the Party pressed its secretariat to circulate certain papers, the creation of the Committee attracted little attention. This was because the war had imposed a virtual moratorium on publicity for purely political activity—a situation further reflected in the electoral truce over the conduct of by-elections, and the fact that the Conservative Party did not hold an Annual Conference between 1937 and 1943. After a brief reopening during the days of the “phoney war”, Neville Chamberlain’s Conservative Research Department had also been closed down, the elimination of partisan activities thought to be for the common good. The PWPCC, therefore, had the lowest possible profile when it started its work. Butler, however, brought energy and enthusiasm to the job, starting off with recruiting members whom he regarded as being “in sympathy with party faith” but not “of the machine.”199 He appointed as his deputy a rising young King’s Counsel and Member of Parliament named Major David Maxwell-Fyfe, but initially only two other representatives from Westminster: these were Lord Cranborne and Henry Brooke, who was, at the time, the Conservative MP for West Lewisham. The other members of the Committee were recruited predominantly from academia, including the well-known historians Arnold Toynbee, Keith Feiling and G.N. Clark. By September 1941, the PWPCC had established eight sub-committees covering a wide range of problem areas such as electoral reform, finance, and the constitution. Because so few MPs were involved, however, its reports were not always well received by the Party, and its rapid growth even caused some consternation to its sponsors in Central Office. More seriously, by July 1943, Butler himself had become irritated by what he called the 198 199

Lee, The Churchill Coalition, 123. Ramsden, Making of Conservative Party Policy, 98.

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“ratiocination of the parent committee”, as well as quarrels between it and its sub-committees. As a result, Butler withdrew from the chairmanship, officially on the grounds of pressure of the work involved in guiding his Education Bill through Parliament. Within a year, however, with his Education Bill safely on the statute book, he was back at the helm of the PWPCC, which continued its work until it died a natural death in 1945. 200 General opinion suggests that the PWPCC, despite its longevity, made less of an impact on Party opinion than the views expressed by the Tory Reform Committee. This was a group of 36 Conservative MPs set up in March 1943 under the chairmanship of Lord Hinchingbrooke. The Committee’s membership included a number of army officers, such as Peter Thorneycroft and Quintin Hogg, who had demobilised themselves to return to political work—and who, “on the basis of impressions gained from discussions with the troops [had] independently reached the conclusion that it was politically necessary for the Conservative Party to change its public image and in particular that it should take social reform more seriously.” Viscount Hinchingbrooke himself called for a ‘revival of Disraelian Toryism’ and the restimulation of One Nation Conservatism in his pamphlet, Full Speed Ahead—Essays in Tory Reform. He also spoke of the ‘desire…in the Progressive Right…to make money the servant of enterprise, not its master, to rebuild our country after the war not with the thought of money gain but with the thought of social purpose.”201 It is generally accepted that the formation of the Committee marked the appearance of what came to be called the “Right Progressive” tendency in the Party—the emergence of an opinion pledged to support a new political settlement after the war, which would replace outworn economic theories, such as laissez-faire. Quintin Hogg warned the House of Commons, a little overdramatically perhaps, that “if you do not give the people social reform, they are going to give you social revolution.”202 Hogg accompanied his warning by regular calls (reflected in the Committee’s monthly magazine Onlooker) to plan for an extension of public ownership. It was convictions such as these that led the Committee to propose the adoption of the Beveridge recommendations, albeit in the face of strong opposition from opponents in

200 Anthony Howard, RAB: The Life of R.A. Butler (London: Jonathan Cape, 1987), 140–44. 201 See Andrew Gamble, The Conservative Nation (London: Routledge, 1974), 33– 35. Cockett, Thinking the Unthinkable, 67. Lord Hinchingbrooke, Full Speed Ahead—Essays in Tory Reform (London: Simpkin, 1944). 202 Quintin Hogg, One Year’s Work (London: Hutchinson, 1944), 60.

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both parties.203 Indeed, many Conservatives considered Beveridge to be an exercise in “back-door socialism”, and were concerned that welfarism might be given priority over financial orthodoxy—i.e., that universality might replace selectivity as the criterion for the provision of benefits, and that grandiose schemes would lead to the extension of wartime controls and the consolidation of the “bureaucratic privileges” of Government technocrats.204 They hoped that the “gospel of reconstruction”, as they saw it, could be whittled down when the Conservatives escaped from coalition. These views were expressed forcefully by A.G. Erskine-Hill, Conservative MP for North Edinburgh, who wrote that “although the condition of the people must be ‘elevated’ after the war, nothing should be done which would be at the expense of the personality, dignity, and character of the individual.”205 Even centrists like Harold Macmillan regarded the Beveridge proposals as extravagant. This view was particularly promoted by the members of a group of Tory MPs who formed the prudently-called Progress Trust, and whose modus operandi was to use personal contact as a means to influence senior members of the Government. Given the perceived effectiveness of collective socialist approaches to the co-ordination of the war effort, however, the actual influence of the Group was minimal. Before moving on to a consideration of the Beveridge Report, it is important to deal with the production of the 1944 Education Act, as this can be regarded as a precursor of the welfare state as it is commonly understood. This particular reform had a difficult birth. Soon after his appointment as President of the Board of Education in July 1941, R.A Butler’s initial proposals for reforming the education system involved overhauling the entrenched state of affairs through which education was provided both by State and Church bodies, as well as by fee-paying public schools. Butler’s first plans were crushingly vetoed by Churchill, who wrote that “[w]e cannot have any party politics in wartime [which your proposals would] raise…in a most acute and dangerous form…and I certainly cannot contemplate a new Education Bill.”206 More generally, Butler later claimed that it was difficult to conduct a conversation with Churchill about education, whose interest in the subject was slight, intermittent and decidedly 203

H. Kopsch, “The Approach of the Conservative Party to Social Policy during World War II” (Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of London, 1974), 44, quoted in Addison, The Road to 1945, 230. 204 Alan Clark, The Tories: Conservatives and the Nation State 1922–1997 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998), 238. 205 A.G. Erskine-Hill, Onlooker (February 1945): 3. 206 Butler Papers G13 (minute from Churchill to Butler 13 September 1941), quoted in Howard, RAB, 115.

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idiosyncratic.207 However, Churchill’s instinct that what Butler was proposing would be politically controversial was well-founded, though in the event the legislation was to achieve a greater degree of party cooperation than occurred on any other aspect of wartime policy. Labour’s general attitude was that the Act, as it emerged, was a worthwhile and muchneeded reform. The introduction of formal schooling had been a Church initiative: indeed, it was not until 1870, when the W.E. Forster Education Act made provision for compulsory primary education, that the State had involved itself in education at all. The Act, however, left parents free to choose between secular and denominational education, which was simply no choice in many (principally rural) areas where there were no State schools. Since then, the Church Schools—Church of England, Roman Catholic and Nonconformist—had jealously guarded their right to teach according to curricula which strictly reflected their respective dogmas. Despite the fact that over the years the Churches had been finding it increasingly difficult to meet the costs of running their schools, and that they had been able to offer little in the way of secondary education, successive Governments had found it impossible to introduce any degree of uniformity into what was, in effect, a dual education system. In general terms, it was undeniable that children attending Church schools were getting a much inferior all-round education to that being delivered to children in State schools. This was a factor that Butler thought might give him leverage in the heated class-based arguments, which, he quickly realised, were the inevitable consequence of any proposal to interfere in the public school system. Recognising this difficulty, he dropped the idea of including them in a general plan of reform—especially after a report by a Scottish judge, commissioned by Butler, threw up a “welcome smokescreen of confusion which protected the public schools from Labour attack.”208 Butler, however, pressed on with his basic proposals, disregarding Churchill’s feelings. As Butler put it, “having viewed the milk and honey from the top of Pisgah, I was damned if I was going to die in the land of Moab.”209 Butler enjoyed a breakthrough in late 1942. The Beveridge Report was due to be published in December, and serious contemplation of its contents meant that even Churchill would have to focus some part of his attention on post-war reconstruction. As the Observer reported, “it was gradually sinking into the Government Whips’ Office that an Education Bill

207

Butler, The Art of the Possible, 109. Butler, The Art of the Possible, 119–20. 209 Butler, The Art of the Possible, 95. 208

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was in every way preferable to having to enact an equally complex and far more expensive measure” based on Beveridge alone. This viewpoint complemented that expressed by Sir Kingsley Wood, Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he said that he “would far rather give money for education than throw it down the sink with Sir William Beveridge.”210 With this amber light, Butler prepared a White Paper entitled “Educational Reconstruction”, which was eventually published on 16 July 1943. The White Paper was circumspect about the future of Church Schools within the new system, referring merely to the “necessary amendments in the law to enable the schools provided by the voluntary bodies to play their part in the proposed developments.” These developments included the provision of nursery schools, the raising of the school-leaving age immediately to fifteen (and thereafter to sixteen without any form of exemption), and the provision of compulsory part-time education up to eighteen for those already at work. The White Paper enjoyed a relatively uneventful reception. It incorporated key Conservative beliefs about traditional religious values and hierarchy, and reflected the fact that on the denominational issue, Butler had solved the problem of how they might be embedded into the new system, by throwing the burden of decision-making onto the Churches themselves. With regard to decisions on funding, if the managers or governors of denominational schools were able and ready to contribute half of the necessary cost of renovating their school buildings, they could apply for “aided” status, in which case they would be left free to appoint staff and determine their forms of religious instruction as before. If the required contribution could not be raised, however, the schools in question could elect to become “controlled”, in which case they would effectively be taken over by the relevant Local Education Authorities, who would then automatically acquire the right to appoint a majority of the schools’ managers. The schools themselves would, however, continue to have the right to deliver religious instruction, though in accordance with an “agreed” non-denominational syllabus. If this was a settlement acceptable to Church of England and Nonconformist schools, the same could not be said for Roman Catholic schools. Catholics regarded their schools, as they told Butler, as an “integral part of a worshipping community.” Despite a failure to achieve a meeting of minds with the Catholic hierarchy, Butler again bought off his more combative opponents by offering Government loans to assist with the financing of renovations to school structures. This allowed his Bill to be published as originally conceived on 15 December 1943, when it was welcomed by the Chief Whip, James Stuart, as a means of keeping 210

Howard, RAB, 133.

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MPs occupied without provoking party strife. Despite a quarrel over teachers’ pay leading to an unexpected Government Committee Stage defeat—which had to be reversed by a threat of a no confidence motion and fierce remonstrances to the House of Commons by Churchill—it eventually reached the statute book without further serious amendment, and became law in August 1944. The education legislation apart, it was of course William Beveridge who gave the greatest impetus to reconstruction planning in most areas of social policy. Having trained as a lawyer after studying at Oxford University, Beveridge, though professedly a Liberal, was greatly influenced by the Fabianism of Beatrice Webb and Leonard Woolf with whom he worked at Toynbee Hall, the London settlement house, and where he acquired a deep interest in the shape and functioning of the social services. The Woolf connection had facilitated his appointment as Director of the London School of Economics in 1919, a post which he held until 1937 when he became Master of University College, Oxford. Earlier, in 1908, Beveridge had been recruited by Winston Churchill—to whom he had been introduced by Beatrice Webb—to become a civil servant in the Board of Trade, to which Churchill had just been appointed as President. In the course of this position Beveridge organised the implementation of a system of labour exchanges and national insurance as a means of combatting unemployment and poverty (see Chapter Two). During the First World War, he was involved in the mobilisation and control of manpower for wartime purposes, and after it ended, he became Permanent Secretary of the Ministry Food until his departure for the LSE. Almost immediately after the outbreak of the Second World War, Beveridge and other economists, including John Maynard Keynes, began a non-partisan campaign, expressed in the Times and elsewhere, for a planned economy. This would require, they argued, the establishment of two agencies: an “economic general staff’” which would collect and assemble key economic data, and a small War Cabinet. Such a Cabinet should possess no Departmental responsibilities, but would include a Minister for Economic Co-ordination. Although they recognised that Government intervention in the management of the economy was anathema to the Conservative Party, they argued that the experience of the First World War had shown the absolute necessity for State control in emergency situations of the sort that now faced the country. The required degree of urgency in decision-making could not be achieved through the normal Government processes of inter-Departmental co-operation. Support in The Times for the Beveridge ideas bothered Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who was worried by the newspaper’s stance on economic matters. The Treasury, too,

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continued to insist on placing financial management before resource planning. The Dunkirk crisis and the replacement of Chamberlain by Churchill were critical for the change in attitudes that were symbolised, for example, by the appointment of Keynes to a role in the Treasury and the recruitment of University economists as members of the Central Economic Information Service. According to Robert Skidelsky, “Keynes was never a passionate social reformer, but even he was caught up in the swing to the left which took place between Dunkirk and the British victory at El Alamein.”211 As Lloyd George was congratulating Keynes on his barony in 1942, Keynes commented that the difference between that time and 1918 was that “then everybody wanted to return to the pleasures of pre-1914. Everyone’s glance this time is forward and not back.”212 From June 1940, Beveridge himself became a temporary civil servant in Ernest Bevin’s Ministry of Labour where, rather than being involved in the central direction of manpower policy as he wished, he was employed in a much less important manpower survey role. The catastrophe of Dunkirk, which he attributed to the lack of cohesive Government planning and direction, had made him an advocate of central compulsion—covering direction of labour as well as planned production and consumption, which he thought was not only required during wartime but would also be required in the peacetime years to follow. Moreover, the entire process should be guided by experts like himself, as well as those who had joined him in his proselytising. Within the Government there was early and strong support for consensual, bi-partisan Government. This sentiment was even shared by Churchill, who had no great love for the Conservative Party, but saw himself as a “national” leader. Such support brought with it a sense that genuine political partnership would ensure that there was no return to the “evils” of the pre-war years. Nevertheless, it was still the case that in the second winter of the war, reconstruction was accorded a very low priority in Whitehall. This was clearly demonstrated by the failure of the Greenwood Committee— which had no power to overrule the actions of individual Departments—to produce anything even remotely meaningful. An unpublished paper by Keynes signalled a new approach, in its statement that Ernest Bevin was of the view that “social security must be the first object of…domestic policy after the war and that the government [sh]ould commit itself to radical remedies for unemployment.”213 211

Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes: Fighting for Britain 1937-1946 (London: Macmillan, 2000), 264. 212 Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes, 265. 213 Addison, The Road to 1945, 168.

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Words became actions after a meeting in February 1941 between the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and the Minister of Health, Malcolm MacDonald, about the need to restructure the national health insurance scheme. The outcome of the meeting was the announcement, on 22 May, of the formation of an inter-Departmental committee of officials to “undertake a survey of the existing national schemes of social insurance and allied services, including workmen’s compensation, and to make recommendations.” As we have seen, at Bevin’s suggestion, Greenwood agreed that Beveridge, whom Bevin had found an uncongenial colleague, should chair the Committee. As Beveridge himself saw it, he had been kicked “upstairs”, ironically to be enabled to devote himself to one of his greatest enthusiasms.214 Nobody could have foreseen at that stage that the report which was ultimately forthcoming would be an enormous best-seller. Beveridge had long been involved in questions of unemployment policy and the development of social insurance dating back to the early years of the century, and he was now preparing his report for the War Cabinet. To the concern of the civil servants on the Committee who feared that their policy input was being constrained, Beveridge exercised tight personal control over the formulation of the recommendations which eventually emerged in the report. Indeed, despite the presence of a Treasury “watchdog” on the Committee in the shape of Edward Hales, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kingsley Wood, insisted that Beveridge should be the sole signatory of the report and thus take full personal responsibility for its contents. Wood’s decision was prompted by the circulation by Beveridge in December 1941 of a paper containing what he called the “Heads of a Scheme”, and which captured the essence of the report that was eventually produced. Even before that point was reached, however, the opposition by leading industrialists and others to any extensive plan of social reform was becoming apparent. In an oblique reference to the Beveridge Committee’s work reported in British Industry, for instance, the President of the Federation of British Industry, Lord Dudley Gordon, told a meeting in Leeds that: We must be careful to avoid suggesting change for its own sake. I say this because there is undoubtedly a tendency to feel that because a thing was done in a certain way before the war, it should be done differently

214

José Harris, William Beveridge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 376.

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afterwards. It is vitally necessary too that we should avoid debasing our desire for a better world into a mere wish for less work and more pay.215

The Daily Mirror, which had been in the van of the reconstruction debate, expressed a certain anxiety in its response to such comments: There are few people who by now have not heard of the Beveridge Report. And yet not a single word of this famous document has been published! No one, except the authors, knows exactly what it contains, which makes it singular that in certain quarters there has already developed a distinct note of hostility towards it. Can it be that certain interests, having received “intelligent forecasts” of the proposals think it well to prepare the ground for attack? Are there people who fear the report and have therefore adopted the sinister practice of damning it in advance?216

A year later, after sales of 156,000 copies of the report, the Daily Mirror offered a considered view of its importance. “Too much has been made of the Beveridge Report”, it said. “It is no revolutionary document. Mainly it is a co-ordination of existing services with certain modest additions thereto. It is a beginning not an end, and it must not be confused with reconstruction in the larger sense.”217 A few days later it added that it was the “depth of feeling in the country which had made the report, in itself of no paramount importance, a symbol of the new Britain.”218 After the publication of the Report and in the light of the enthusiasm which it engendered, British Industry maintained a masterful silence, but by the end of December the insurance interests (Approved Societies and Friendly Societies) were openly attacking its proposals, as were representatives of the medical profession. The key statement in the “Heads of a Scheme” paper itemised a range of assumptions which would underpin all the recommendations that Beveridge would be putting forward. Arguably, they exceeded his terms of reference but all, except the proposal for a national health service, were to be carried forward in one way or another during the life of the Coalition. These underpinning assumptions were that there should be “A national health service for prevention and comprehensive treatment available to all members of the community; Universal children’s allowances for all children up to 14 or if in full-time education up to 16; Full use of powers of the state to maintain employment and reduce unemployment to 215

British Industry (June 1942): 136, quoted in Arthur Marwick, Britain In The Century of Total War (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970), 306–07. 216 Daily Mirror, 2 November 1942, 2. 217 Daily Mirror, 16 February 1943, 2. 218 Daily Mirror, 19 February 1943, 2.

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seasonal, cyclical and interval unemployment, that is to say to unemployment suitable for treatment by cash allowances.” Kenneth Harris judged that the Beveridge Report “appeared at the perfect moment” in the context of the war’s progress. On the other hand: Its arrival, however, was not welcomed by Churchill. It would be unfair to say that he was opposed to all its contents, but he was suspicious of what it might lead to…he did not swallow everything Bracken told him about the alleged socialist plotting of Dalton and his colleagues at the Ministry of Economic Warfare…but he had not taken the seals of office to make Britain into a socialist state.219

Theoretically, Beveridge’s commission had simply been to provide advice to the Government. Yet as the possibilities of stimulating real change grew, Beveridge lobbied for his proposals in advance of publication to exert pressure on the War Cabinet. By April 1942, the press was so full of inspired leaks as to prompt the Home Intelligence Unit to observe that “Sir William Beveridge’s proposals for an ‘all-in’ social security scheme are said to be popular.”220 This implied, of course, that much of the detail which the Report was to contain was already in the public domain. Within a week of the Report’s publication, however, as well as registering widespread continuing acclaim for the Report, Home Intelligence was picking up concerns that the Government might not be wholeheartedly behind it, and that its recommendations would be watered down or shelved when the war was over. Around the time the Report was debated in the House of Commons, there was what has been called a “general election in miniature” with six by-elections in England and Scotland, and two in Northern Ireland.221 In all of these local campaigns the Beveridge Report was in the shop window. The Common Wealth fielded its first four candidates, all of whom were supported by the local Labour parties, and there were also two left-wing Independent Labour candidates. The significant reduction in the Conservative vote in all the constituencies was taken as a sign that politics was returning to the normal pattern of Tory versus Socialist. In due course, there were to be White Papers on Social Security, Employment Policy and a National Health Service in 1944, and Family Allowances legislation in

219

Harris, William Beveridge, 219. Home Intelligence weekly report No. 80, 15 April 1942, quoted in Addison, The Road to 1945, 215. 221 Addison, The Road to 1945, 225. 220

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1945. Family allowance was the “first universalist benefit of the modern welfare state.”222 In line with its principal terms of reference, Beveridge’s proposals envisaged a scheme of social insurance against all forms of interruption and destruction of earning power, and for certain other special expenditures. The principal cash payments would be paid at a rate high enough to provide “subsistence”, i.e., sufficient to live on, free of poverty. These payments, including those for unemployment, would be without a means-test and would be paid from a Social Insurance Fund built up by contributions from the insured persons, their employers, if any, and from the State.223 It would be compulsory for all employed as well as self-employed persons to pay contributions to the Fund. Beveridge argued that: benefits in return for contributions rather than free allowances from the State is what the people of Britain desire. This desire is shown both by the established popularity of compulsory insurance, and by the phenomenal growth of voluntary insurance…It is shown in another way by the strength of popular objection to any kind of means-test.224

The reaction against means-testing was not surprising; it was part of the legacy of the bitter depression years, as well as the detestation of the Household Means-Test, even though this had been modified in 1941. However, a means-tested programme, known as National Assistance, would be made available to supplement the benefit where there were extraordinary needs. All social risks would be pooled. Industries with low unemployment risks would share equally with those having high unemployment risks, acknowledging that the volume of unemployment in a particular industry was not within its effective control. Furthermore, whilst accepting that: most men who have once gained the habit of work would rather work than be idle…getting work may involve a change of habits…and making a painful effort of some other kind. The danger of providing benefits which are both adequate and indefinite in duration is that men, as creatures who adapt themselves to circumstances, may settle down to them. Such men should be required [therefore] as a condition of continued benefit to attend a work or training centre…as a means of preventing habituation to idleness and as a means of improving capacity for earnings.225

222

Timmins, The Five Giants, 49. William Beveridge, Social Insurance and Allied Services (Cmd. 6404) (London: HMSO, 1942), 11. 224 Beveridge, Social Insurance and Allied Services, 12. 225 Beveridge, Social Insurance and Allied Services, 58. 223

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During the course of its deliberations, Beveridge’s Committee received evidence from various interested bodies and institutions such as the Fabian Society, the TUC, The Liberal Parliamentary Party, the National Labour Organisation, the National Council for Women, PEP (Political and Economic Planning), and the British Employers’ Federation. More than 50 private evidence sessions were held with witnesses. Apart from detailed questions about, for example, the rates of benefit and how long insurance cover should last, all of which were picked up by the Committee, of particular concern to most of them was the need for economic planning for something approximating to full employment. As we have seen above, this was one of the assumptions upon which the Report’s final recommendations were predicated. This assumption was based not on the abolition of all unemployment—which was clearly impractical—but on the basis of 8.8 per cent unemployment.226 Beveridge elaborated on this position in very striking terms in a speech recorded in The Pillars of Security, his book of papers prepared for different occasions between February 1942 and March 1943. It was in this speech, under the heading “New Britain”, that he highlighted the reference which appeared in the summary of the Report to “five giant evils, of Want, of Disease, of Ignorance, of Squalor and of Idleness” from which he wanted to “free the new Britain.” The ways of achieving Freedom from Want, through Social Insurance and a scheme of Family Allowances, he said, had been covered in his submitted report. He then went on to talk about the means of dealing with the other evils which he admitted had been covered “only to some extent” in the report. The most important of these was the need for a comprehensive medical service covering every kind of treatment at home and in hospital, the cost of which would be met out of the Social Insurance Fund. The need for improvements in the fields of education and housing and for the avoidance of mass unemployment were covered in his elaboration of how to deal with the Diseases of Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness.227 Beveridge had wanted to be made the Director General of Manpower in the Ministry of Labour, and he had also spent some months completing his study of how the army was misusing the talents of skilled engineers. Nevertheless, he worked diligently and was able to sign off on his report in November 1942. This, in turn, allowed it to be printed and presented to Parliament as a Command Paper (Cmd. 6404) on 1 December 1942. At the

226

Beveridge, Social Insurance and Allied Services, 164. William Beveridge, The Pillars of Security (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1943).

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same time, it was placed on sale, together with a companion volume containing the submissions which had been made to it. Advance copies had been given to the press confidentially on 27 November. For some days after publication, the Report seemed to have the backing of Government; the BBC broadcast its general recommendations to Europe in twenty-two languages. Aneurin Bevan’s unwillingness to believe that “the walls of the Tory Jericho” would fall so easily was, however, borne out by the fate of a summary of the Report. This summary Beveridge had written earlier in November with a view to distributing it to the press to try to ensure that, as he put it, “the points of greatest importance would receive the greatest attention.” Yet the summary was rejected by the Ministry of Information, which decided to prepare a summary of its own. Furthermore, a summary which Beveridge wrote at the request of the Army Bureau of Education was also withdrawn after it had been printed and circulated, in a further apparent confirmation of Bevan’s view that ‘[l]ike everything else the workers had ever achieved, the…Report would have to be fought for.” This did not mean that Bevan accepted all its proposals. He had always been reluctant, for example, to agree to basing social services on insurance schemes, holding that the non-contributory principle would have the double advantage of avoiding unnecessary bureaucracy, and the imposition of a poll tax masquerading as an insurance premium.228 Yet Bevan’s suspicions about Tory intentions were further raised in January 1943 when Churchill reconstructed his Government in a manner which increased the Tory dominance and left, as he saw it, the three Labour Ministers hopelessly outnumbered and reduced to the role of parliamentary “shock absorbers.” Although obviously upset by all of this political manoeuvring, Beveridge presented a determined face. In the book of papers, The Pillars of Security, prepared for different occasions between the beginning of February 1942 and the end of March 1943, he wryly referred to the ultimate publication of the report as being a case of “Third Time Lucky?”229 The reasons for the Government’s circumspection over the production of summaries of the report became clear when the Report came up for discussion in the House of Commons between 16 and 18 February 1943. During the winter of 1942–43, the House saw the development of an increasingly partisan atmosphere, which became ever more noticeable after the publication of the Beveridge recommendations. A confidential report

228

Michael Foot, Aneurin Bevan: A Biography, Volume I. 1897–1945 (London: Paladin Granada Publishing, 1979), 407–08. 229 Beveridge, The Pillars of Security, 196–97.

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prepared for the Conservative Party leadership by an ad hoc committee overseen by Party Chairman Ralph Assheton had attacked the Beveridge prescription in unrestrainedly frank terms. The report claimed that their views were shared by no fewer than 90 per cent of the Parliamentary Party, many of whom, it has been suggested, shared Churchill’s assessment that Beveridge was “an awful windbag and a dreamer”, with more than his fair share of sacro egoismo.230 There is nothing to suggest, however, that Churchill subscribed to the view, expressed by Correlli Barnett in his 1986 book The Audit of War— which portrayed the Welfare State as one of the major causes of Britain’s post-Second World War international decline—that Beveridge was the leader of a “conspiracy of evangelical, nonconformist, and humanitarian Christians bent on corrupting the people with promises of a [post-war] social New Jerusalem, when they should have been facing up to the chill realties of economic bankruptcy and industrial reconstruction.” (The other members of the conspiracy, according to Barnett, were people such as Clement Attlee, Hugh Dalton, Harold Laski, William Temple, and many other leading members of the British Labour and Liberal Parties.)231 All that apart, the Assheton committee’s opposition to Beveridge was based on both economic and moral grounds. Their economic objections were the familiar ones of affordability; more keenly felt, however, was their sense that a comprehensive and unified scheme of social security would not be solely devoted to curing want, and would benefit everybody regardless of want. Fortunately, perhaps, the terseness of their views was played down somewhat by the Party spokesmen in the ensuing debate in the House. The debate took place on a somewhat mealy-mouthed Resolution moved by Arthur Greenwood, the (then) Leader of the Opposition, but agreed by the Government: That this House welcomes the Report of Sir William Beveridge on Social Insurance and Allied Services as a comprehensive review of the present provisions in this sphere, and as a valuable aid to determining the lines on 230

Jefferys, “British Politics and Social Policy”, 116. Correlli Barnett, The Audit of War: The Illusion and Reality of Britain as a Great Nation (London: Macmillan, 1986), 13–19, 36–37, 279–304. Barnett goes even further, claiming that “ever since the early nineteenth century, a romantic-cumChristian evangelical and ‘Victorian’ inheritance had weaned the British people away from productive and entrepreneurial values and substituted instead an ethic of humane learning, gentlemanly personal behaviour, pacific internationalism and disdain for materialism; an ethic mediated among the working classes by nonconformist chapels, and among the upper and middle classes by the public schools.” See 12–15, 213–33.

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which developments and legislation should be pursued as part of the Government’s policy of post-war reconstruction.232

This was hardly a ringing endorsement of Beveridge’s proposals. According to one review, Sir John Anderson created “a disastrously negative impression of the government’s intentions.”233 The further explanations of the Government’s attitude to the proposals were scarcely an improvement. The burden of Anderson’s “endorsement”, for example, supported in a speech by Sir Kingsley Wood, was that though the Government should undertake to prepare the necessary legislation, no financial commitments could be promised during the continuation of the war. In other words, the Government would plan, but not legislate. This suited the mood of most Conservative backbenchers, to the extent that four of them, headed by a leading businessman, Sir Patrick Hannon—who had planned an amendment calling for the postponement of any legislation based on Beveridge—felt that they now had no need to proceed with it. The Tory Reform Committee, however, thought the Government had not gone far enough “in yielding to the Beveridge clamour.” And on the Labour backbenches, enthusiasm for early implementation was running high. Labour’s position reflected the increasingly evident state of public opinion, and resulted in their support for an amendment put down by, amongst other members of the Labour Party, James Griffiths and Emmanuel Shinwell. The amendment expressed dissatisfaction with Government but insisted, however, that the Beveridge plan should not be executed in haste. Although the amendment was defeated, with 97 Labour MPs ignoring the advice of Labour Ministers and voting to support the amendment—and despite a strong rumour that Ernest Bevin would resign if Labour MPs pressed their critical resolution—the result was, up to that time, the largest parliamentary expression of anti-Government feeling during the lifetime of the Coalition. Labour leaders were obviously in a dilemma. By their continuing compliance with the majority view of the Cabinet, they were repudiating the strength of feeling on Beveridge of most of their MPs and their followers in the country.234 The vote caused a fissure within Labour, principally between 232

Hansard, HC Deb, 17 February 19443, vol. 386, cols. 1742–916. Harris, William Beveridge, 221. 234 Hermiston, All Behind You, 242: “When the House divided, Labour’s amendment expressing dissatisfaction with the government’s approach was defeated by 335 votes to 119...the protests were led by ninety-seven labour MPs, including former War Cabinet member Arthur Greenwood, who had commissioned Beveridge’s report. David Lloyd George, now eighty years old, and along with Churchill, the 233

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backbenchers and ministers. Jim Griffiths, MP for Llanelli, who had moved the critical amendment, summed up the view of the Party’s rank and file: The Beveridge Plan has become in the minds of the nation both a symbol and a test...a symbol of the kind of Britain we are determined to build when the victory is won...Frankly, I am terribly disappointed that the Government has not risen to the opportunity offered them this week of giving a real message to the people of this country.235

The same situation, with the same outcome, arose a little later when, in a debate on a Pensions Bill, Labour Ministers, in the face of opposition by a significant number of Labour MPs, supported the Government’s refusal to sanction an increase in pension rates, on the grounds that it would jeopardise further consideration of the Beveridge proposals. An interesting speculation about the emerging divergence, in early 1943, of political attitudes on the question of reconstruction, is that if the establishment of the Beveridge inquiry in 1941 can be seen, retrospectively, as a deliberate attempt to distract attention from the public anxieties caused by the war, then permitting parliamentary discussion of Beveridge in February 1943 may have fulfilled a parallel purpose. At a time when the war was turning in Britain’s favour, and public expectations were running high about what people deserved for their Herculean war efforts, some sort of recognition that recompense would eventually be needed could not be avoided. The pressure being brought by Labour Cabinet members served to enhance this feeling. The Opposition amendment to the Government’s announced policy on Beveridge could be seen as a warning that the country would not be prepared to accept another Lloyd George-type “homes fit for heroes” con-trick when the war was over. The bare figures of the House of Commons vote—approval of the Government’s proposals by 335 votes to 119—conceal, rather than reveal, the tensions affecting both major parties over Beveridge. On the Conservative side, the Beveridge Report’s proposals had brought into relief the ideological divisions between those relatively few who wanted to join the Labour and Liberal Parties in the march towards a New Jerusalem, and the vast majority who saw no need for a brave new “Beveridgean” world. So too, despite the strength of feeling among the large group of Labour backbenchers calling for “Beveridge now”, there was, in fact, a serious split

father of the welfare state, came up from his country home, Churt, specifically to vote against this ‘watering down’ of social reform; he marched into the ‘No’ lobby with his daughter Megan on his arm.” 235 Hermiston, All Behind You, 242–43.

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between them and Labour Ministers. Before the House debate, Ernest Bevin had lectured Labour MPs on the shortcomings of the Report they were about to consider. He particularly disliked the provision for children’s allowances and for workmen’s compensation, and saw no reason for disturbing the private practices of doctors. He had not been consulted about the proposed amendment, which he said he considered a vote of personal censure. Lack of consultation and agreement was not the way Trade Unions behaved. This led to accusations that he was acting as if he were in the War Cabinet as a representative of the Unions, and not of the Labour Party. A further indication of the strained relations between Labour backbenchers and their Ministers was the fact that the concluding speech for the Government had been delivered by Labour’s Herbert Morrison, who had tried to convince the House that the Government had accepted most of Beveridge’s proposals and would do its best to implement them. His speech clearly cut little ice with his recalcitrant Party colleagues: In the House, it had been my duty to explain that in the circumstances of the war the plan could not be implemented at once. I was bitterly criticized for this, my friends in the Labour Party insinuating that the cabinet was getting me to make excuses for Tory unwillingness to make social advance. I could not accept that their criticisms were objective for they knew that there was a war to be won.236

In short, it was evident that many in the Party shared the views which Aneurin Bevan would articulate at the Party Conference in June 1943. Pleas for national unity were being deployed as “instruments of political blackmail”—acceptance of them could only benefit the Conservative Party, and it was time for Labour to take the political initiative. Labour Ministers, however, felt that it was important, and in the Party’s longer-term interests, that they be seen to be in Government and not to be responding in a partisan fashion to wider party pressures, which would almost inevitably have led to their departure from the Coalition, with a corresponding loss of influence in shaping future policies. The Conservative approach to Beveridge reflected, in large part, Churchill’s initial view that until the war was won, too much time should not be spent thinking about what might come afterwards. Whilst Churchill’s myopic approach is rarely wise in politics, he was obviously anxious to avoid an atmosphere of political bidding and counter-bidding on Beveridge. Such an atmosphere might have broken the party truce, and driven the 236 Herbert Morrison, An Autobiography (London: Odhams Press Limited, 1960), 229.

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Labour leaders out of Government before a general election was clearly in sight. Envisaging, as he did, a continuation of the Coalition with himself at its head after the cessation of hostilities, Churchill believed that it was important to keep the Government intact and not allow the divisions over Beveridge, which clearly existed between and within both parties, to upset the ongoing arrangements. His public rationalisation was that “[w]e must not forget that we are a Parliament in the eighth year, and I could not as Prime Minister be responsible at this stage for binding my successor.”237 Nevertheless, concerns about the stability of the Coalition led Churchill to display impatience at Beveridge’s dogged pursuit of public support for his Report, as a means of bringing pressure for its early implementation. Churchill viewed this as an attempt to usurp the traditional functions of government. There was also, of course, the hugely significant question of affordability, which would be an issue for a future that stretched into peacetime. This anxiety, as we have seen, was both shared and expressed in forceful terms by his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Kingsley Wood, and his Treasury team. Even before the report had been published, the Chancellor had minuted Churchill that the Beveridge plan involved “an impractical financial commitment” requiring huge tax increases, as well as the provision of money to those who did not need it. The Treasury view was encapsulated in a paper on post-war employment policy prepared by the Economic Section, masterminded by James Meade. Amongst other things, the paper wrestled with the question of what role policy might play in maintaining high aggregate demand after the war. Keynes was drawn into the debate and, placed between Meade, Beveridge, and the Treasury, exerted his influence on the “scale of finance” accessible for the Beveridge Report.238 In effect, Keynes became Beveridge’s Treasury advocate. In July, the two men gained permission for the appointment of a small committee, which was attended by Lionel Robbins and the Government actuary Sir George Epps, to consider the financing of Beveridge’s proposals. The aim was to find ways of reducing the estimated initial cost of Beveridge from £700m per year to £450m, by reducing the proposed increase in benefit rates, limiting the insurable categories to the “employee class”, and excluding the first child from child benefit. In the event, after a number of meetings, Keynes recommended that it would be better, at first, to consolidate and standardise the existing benefit system, and only then introduce the complete system in stages, as and when it could be afforded. A further consideration was the feeling, in some quarters, that 237 238

Lindsay and Harrington, The Conservative Party, 138. Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes, 266.

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American opinion would be offended by the levels of expenditure required to implement Beveridge in full, given that Britain’s economy was now heavily dependent on American financial support. Thirty years earlier, as we have seen, Churchill had helped to introduce the Liberal Government’s social insurance scheme, which was designed for the working classes but excluded the more affluent from the state-organised unemployment and health provisions. Now, Churchill harboured doubts about the universality of the Beveridge proposals. These doubts were shared by many others in his Party, some of whom were even more greatly concerned that Beveridge was nothing more than a recipe for socialism and, as Butler put it, “spent their time in the Smoke Room consuming expensive drinks and intriguing among themselves.”239 The Conservative approach, therefore, could be seen as a desperate play for time. Even after Churchill had bowed to mounting Parliamentary and public pressure for a debate, his broadcast speech on 21 March 1943 following the non-committal outcome of the debate was equally circumspect. He did not mention the Beveridge Report by name, but set out his own vision of a national insurance scheme covering all classes “from the cradle to the grave”, in pursuit of which he then set up another committee to consider the way forward. The consequences of this, in 1944, were White Papers on Social Security and Employment policies. Further White Papers on Housing and a National Health Service were produced in 1945. The last two years of the Coalition government also saw the passing of the Butler Education Act (see above) and, almost as its last gasp, a Family Allowances Act (see below).240 Yet it was only to these last two measures, with a general election pending, that Churchill was prepared to commit significant amounts of public money. With his Report published, Beveridge began work on a paper designed to develop a strategy for the realisation of full employment. He was assisted in this endeavour by a team of economists which included Barbara Wooton, Nicholas Kaldor, E.F. Schumacher, and Frank Pakenham. Beveridge’s paper, “Full Employment in a Free Society”, was, however, deliberately pre-empted by the issue of the Government’s own White Paper. Wary of his capacity for self-promotion, Government assistance with the preparation of his paper had been flatly refused. Churchill’s justification for freezing him out was that “[h]e puts his nose into too many things.”241 The 239

Chuter Ede Diary, 26 October 1942, British Library, Add. MS59695, 181, quoted in Jefferys, “British Politics and Social Policy”, 126. 240 Timmins, The Five Giants, 46–50. 241 Lord Beveridge, Power and Influence (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1953), 228–29.

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White Paper on Employment Policy (Cmd. 6257) was published on 26 May 1944; it presented a compromise. On the one hand there were those in the Economic Section, like Keynes’ supporter James Meade (whose paper “Internal Measures for the Prevention of General Unemployment”, written in July 1941, was still relevant), who argued that the disincentives to work of expanded unemployment and sickness benefits, as proposed by Beveridge, would be more than balanced by the positive effects on productivity of a better fed, better housed, better clothed, and better educated population. On the other hand there were Treasury traditionalists, such as Hubert Henderson, who warned that universal benefits would be much more expensive than targeted ones, and that redistribution on the scale suggested would reduce economic efficiency.242 This latter view was promoted in vitriolic terms in The Times on 3 December 1944 by columnist Foxy Falk, who wrote that the Beveridge Report was “the road to the moral ruin of the Nation…not a symptom of the vitality of our civilisation but of its approaching end.” Meade wanted Keynes to produce a “Keynes Plan” on post-war employment policy to complement the Beveridge Plan, but Keynes thought that this would be one Plan too many. Instead, he contented himself by encouraging, commenting on, or criticising the ideas of the team drafting the White Paper (the imposing sounding Inter-Departmental Committee on Post-War Internal Economic Problems) as they emerged.243 Recalling a visit he had made with Winston Churchill to troops embarking for the D-Day invasion of Europe, Ernest Bevin, when introducing the Government’s White Paper on Employment Policy in the House of Commons on 21 June 1944, said that ‘the question they put to me was “‘Ernie, when we have done this job for you, are we going back on the dole?’”244 He and Churchill had assured them that they would not. Yet the measures which would prove necessary for these men to avoid “the dole”, and for manpower resources to be reallocated from wartime to peacetime 242

Hubert Henderson was an Oxford don and former editor of The Nation, who was employed by the Treasury as a wartime economic adviser. Henderson “claimed that Beveridge’s remedy for poverty did not match his diagnosis, because a majority of people relieved by the scheme would not in fact be ‘in need.’ He objected that Beveridge’s claim to have devised a uniform and comprehensive Plan was in fact spurious since Beveridge had invoked the principles of ‘comprehensiveness’ and ‘uniformity’ when they suited him and ignored them when they did not. A cheaper and more logical alternative...would be to pay benefits to those in need out of direct taxation—the same ‘means-test’ as was imposed on taxpayers being applied to recipients of public relief.” Harris, William Beveridge, 423. 243 Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes, 269–71. 244 Hansard, HC Deb, 21 June 1944, 5th ser. vol. 401, col. 213.

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applications, were far from clear-cut, and caused further disagreement as the White Paper was being drafted for the War Cabinet. On the one hand there were those, principally economists from the Economic Section of the War Cabinet, who pressed the Keynesian case. Still unorthodox at the time, this approach mandated tackling unemployment by financial and fiscal variations—what came to be more widely known as “deficit financing”— designed to prime the pump of aggregate demand. Opposed to this group of economists was the Treasury, which still believed that structural problems in industry were to blame for unemployment, and that what was most important was to restore Britain’s export markets. Treasury dogma had been defined by Churchill at the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, when he had told the Commons that “very little additional employment can…as a general rule be created by State borrowing and State expenditure”, and such measures were still regarded by Treasury mandarins as “unhistorical, unimaginative and unscientific.” What was ironic about their stance was that Keynes was actually employed in the Treasury at the time. Beveridge’s view was that the Treasury dogma “had been consumed completely in the fires of war.”245 What could be considered an acceptable level of unemployment? This was a question that caused endless debate. Keynes thought that the “normal” expected level of unemployment should be based on the unemployment average of 5 per cent which had existed before 1914. The Treasury view, however, was shaped by the experience of Britain’s export industries in the 1930s when, amongst other things, the restoration of the Gold Standard had pushed the average unemployment rate up to 10 per cent. Wartime unemployment had fallen to what were clearly going to be unsustainable levels after the war ended (although by 1949 unemployment was still less than 1 per cent), but this was a result of abnormally high Government spending and subsidies, a battery of controls, labour conscription, and compulsory arbitration of labour disputes. Speculation continued, however, until the later production by Milton Friedman of his “natural rate” hypothesis. His “natural rate” of 8 per cent (not a great advance on Keynes’s 5%) was produced, as had been the pre-1914 level, by a cyclically adjusted price level. When the draft White Paper went to the War Cabinet, Churchill, having been unable to find time to consider it properly, simply noted that “when things looked bad, all sorts of new expenditure would be required”, and it was nodded through, though Beaverbrook asked that more be said 245

William Beveridge, Changes in Family Life (Works of William H. Beveridge) (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015), 260.

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about the need to stimulate private investment in case of a recession. What emerged on the issue was, again, a somewhat tepid compromise which inevitably aroused mixed feelings. As economist John Jewkes noted, “the essence of the programme…was that of allowing the market economy to run without hindrance or interference unless private and normal Government expenditure seemed to be inadequate.” The deliberate use of a budgetary deficit to stimulate demand in a period of recession was specifically ruled out. Many socialists, and Keynes in particular, thought (perhaps not unexpectedly) that it was a feeble outcome, a mere “groping towards the light”.246 The right wing of the Conservative Party believed that it would have widespread support in industry, whilst most Labour backbenchers who spoke in the debate continued to express the view that unemployment was inseparable from capitalism. Aneurin Bevan described the White Paper as a sham designed to discredit socialism. Sometime later, even Ralph Assheton, chairman of the Conservative Party, used similar language, seeing it as a series of “empty shams, promising more than could possibly be delivered.”247 There was very little public comment on the White Paper proposals, though there was widespread apprehension that demobilisation would result in mass unemployment. Speaking later, however, Sir Edward Bridges, Cabinet Secretary, said he felt confident that the policy outlined in the White Paper would be followed by whichever party won the election. At the time of the publication of the Beveridge Report, there was considerable concern about Britain’s falling birth-rate. As Beveridge explained later, he had not commented on the population question in his report, not because he thought it unimportant but because he regarded it as outside his terms of reference. Indeed, in The Pillars of Security, he was to write that “children’s allowances can help to restore the birth-rate, both by making it possible for parents who desire more children to bring them into the world without damaging the chances of those already born and as a signal of national interest in children, setting the tone of public opinion.”248 A Daily Herald leader echoed this sentiment on 2 December 1942. Churchill’s instinct, as we have seen, was to avoid committing the Government at that stage of the war to a “cloud of pledges and promises which arise out of the hopeful and genial side of man’s nature and are not brought into relation with the hard facts of life.” He had made it clear to the Cabinet before Parliament debated Beveridge that his own proposals should only be introduced when the time was right. The Government was, however,

246

Addison, The Road to 1945, 246. Addison, The Road to 1945, 246. 248 Beveridge, The Pillars of Security, 151–52. 247

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inclined to view the early introduction of family allowances more favourably than it was to view the implementation of Beveridge as a whole.249 It had in fact, as Sir John Anderson told the House during the Beveridge debate, already decided before the report was produced that, whatever might be done about cash allowances in pursuit of the report, “by far the best and most effective measure within the limits of its possibilities is the fullest development of the various child welfare services which bring benefits directly to the children.”250 Despite his continuing reluctance to divert attention from winning the war, in his broadcast to the nation on 1 March 1943, when he advanced his four-year plan of social and economic reforms, Churchill had said that the preparation of legislation was underway to halt the decline in the birth-rate, to provide for the care of the young, and to establish sound hygienic conditions for motherhood.251 Nonetheless, the cost of introducing universal family allowances before the end of the war was thought to be prohibitive. In addition, on the political front there were Conservative fears that early implementation of a measure included in Beveridge would increase the clamour for full implantation of the Report.252 But as the war dragged on, growing pressures on families forced the government to turn to piecemeal, selective, relief measures. Pay for service personnel was increased and in 1944, they introduced increases in allowances, presented as a temporary measure pending demobilisation and including a tax-free allowance of 12s 6d for each child of a separated couple. The shape of the future scheme of family allowances was spelled out in the White Paper on Social Insurance, published in September 1944.253 The emphasis was on simplicity. The graduated allowance proposed by Beveridge was rejected. The allowance was to be paid for all children after the first child, and would cease when a child reached the age of sixteen, regardless of whether he or she continued in full-time education. The allowance was to be set at 5 shillings per week, rather than the 8 shillings proposed by Beveridge, and it would not be uprated in line with inflation. Though this would not meet the subsistence needs of a child, it was argued that the state must not unduly undermine the parents’ responsibility for the 249

Winston S. Churchill, The History of the Second World War, Vol. IV: The Hinge of Fate (London: Cassell, 1951), 86. 250 Hansard, HC Deb, 16 February 1943, 5th ser. vol. 386, col. 1666. 251 Winston S. Churchill, “After the War: the Prime Minister’s Broadcast”, The Times, 22 March 1943. 252 Phoebe Hall, Hilary Land, R.A. Parker and Adrian Webb, Change, Choice and Conflict in Social Policy (London: Heineman, 1975), 209–14. 253 White Paper on Social Insurance, Cmd. 6550, 1944.

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care of their offspring. The intention to extend the provision of free school milk and meals to all children was presented as compensation for this “inadequate” rate of allowance, an argument which Beveridge found unconvincing. Though it could be regarded as a change in Government policy, it was decided, and generally accepted, that the introduction of family allowances should be given priority over the rest of the social insurance package. One argument for doing so was offered by Eleanor Rathbone. “From the population point of view”, she told the House of Commons, “we’ve not a year to lose.”254 Given the “present rate of decline”, she forecast that “in twenty-eight years, we shall lose from a fourth to a fifth of our population.” The Times described the scheme “as something more than a measure to mitigate want caused by size of family. It is…the first very limited step by the State with the deliberate intention of encouraging parenthood.”255 Some MPs, however, thought that family allowances would have little effect on the birth-rate. The Family Allowances Bill was published in March 1945. It conformed to the scheme outlined in the White Paper, providing allowances of 5 shillings a week payable for every child after the first, and financed from taxation. Importantly, the allowance would be paid to the mother. The Bill became law on 15 June 1945, but the first payments were not made until 6 August 1946. School milk became available free of charge on the same day, and free school meals were provided from the beginning of April 1947. Neither of the remaining two White Papers issued in 1944—one on the National Health Service and the other on Social Security—led to legislation before the fall of the Coalition Government. With regard to the former, it had generally been accepted before 1939, even by the British Medical Association (BMA), that the hospital system should be unified. At the time it was divided between local authority hospitals, which provided around three-quarters of the beds, and independent voluntary hospitals.256 It was also accepted that the existing system of Health Insurance, which paid the doctor for treating the wage-earner, should be extended to cover the wage-earner’s family and should, moreover, include access to specialist 254

Eleanor Rathbone was a member of the Royal Commission on the Population set up in March 1944 to examine future population trends. 255 The Times, 9 March 1945. 256 This division was not the only factor inhibiting unification. There was also the traditional split between general practice and specialisation which had been entrenched by the 1911 National Insurance Act. See Martin Pugh, We Danced All Night: A Social History of Britain Between the Wars (London: Vintage Books, 2009), 46–47.

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treatment.257 This was given additional force by the high incidence of civilian casualties caused by air-raids during the war. To address this problem, a temporary Emergency Medical Service (EMS), with doctors and nurses directly employed by and paid for by the government, was established. The scheme, which utilised the facilities and staff of both public and voluntary hospitals, and which was expanded in due course to include the treatment of sick servicemen, provided, to some degree, an early pattern of a unified service and demonstrated the virtues of centralised planning. The EMS was successful, and one of the consequences of this was that it made the voluntary hospitals financially dependent on the Government. The Nuffield Trust, realising that this would leave it unviable once the war ended, campaigned to be brought into a unified system after the war, but on terms that would allow its institutions to retain their voluntary status. In a declaration of policy in 1941, however, the Government had made it clear that in any post-war National Health Service, local authority hospitals would be given a large say in the running of voluntary hospitals. In a somewhat surprising report in 1942, a Medical Planning Commission, representing the views of the medical profession, put forward a plan which, in large part, anticipated the ultimate shape of the post-war NHS. The plan envisaged a service available to all and free at the point of delivery, the unification of hospitals under regional administrations, and the creation of group practices of salaried general practitioners working from health centres. Private practice outside the State scheme would still be permitted. Some aspects of it were, however, fiercely opposed at the time and, later, resisted; it was felt that they might undermine the independent status of general practitioners. It was the proposal that general practitioners, who had been paid on the basis of a capitation fee per individual patient, should be salaried which proved most troublesome when a Labour Government came to put flesh on these ideas. After consideration by the Reconstruction Committee in January 1944, a White Paper, largely the work of Minister of Health Henry Willink, was approved. Lord Beaverbrook opposed what he saw as a “socialist measure”, which a post-war Conservative 257

“For patients…the provision of medical treatment varied widely according to their income…The very poor had to obtain a note from the local relieving officer entitling them to free treatment on the parish. The slightly better off were members of a variety of Friendly Societies through whom, in return for paying anything from one to threepence a week they received treatment from doctors who were paid an annual retainer by the Societies. The largest group comprised those people insured under the 1911 National Insurance Act—some twenty million in 1938. By 1939, over two-thirds of doctors had joined the scheme. But the insurance covered only insured employees and not their dependents’. See Pugh, We Danced All Night, 53.

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Government should not be pursuing, but approval followed nonetheless after a reconvened meeting of the War Cabinet. In general, Conservatives accepted the White Paper scheme as a further instalment of the Government’s social programme, worthy of at least restrained approval. With a similar lack of outright enthusiasm, the Labour Party decided to endorse it as a step in the right direction, although they believed it had shortcomings.258 In a dramatic change in their apparent support for the White Paper, however, the BMA acceded to the expressed view of a majority of doctors who claimed that its proposals would cause a deterioration of services, and make medicine a less attractive profession. In the face of vehement opposition, Willink, who emphasised that the White Paper was only advisory in nature, spent time between its consideration by the Commons and the general election in the following year, trying to find ways to come to terms with the profession. The modifications he devised included a weakening of the administrative role of local government, new financial arrangements for the voluntary hospitals, and the removal of the requirement that doctors in the proposed health centres should become salaried employees. These changes were not formally announced before the break-up of the Coalition, but slowly filtered out through a series of press leaks. Willink justified his modifications on the grounds that the Conservative Party would not have accepted the emasculation of the voluntary hospitals during the war, and that what he was attempting to provide was a scheme which would be more palatable to both the Party and the medical profession than the ideas offered in the White Paper. After the disbandment of the Coalition, the “Caretaker” Cabinet rejected Willink’s revisions on the grounds that it could not be seen to be watering down its approach before a general election. The Labour Party was already promoting such a view, and was particularly opposed to making concessions to the medical profession. This all meant that by the spring of 1945, public health policy had become a source of political controversy. At the Labour Party’s 1945 Annual Conference, there was general agreement that Willink’s negotiations had resulted in a scheme which would “completely destroy all hope of a National Health Service as we have envisaged in the past.”259 The Conservatives supported the idea that pre-war services should evolve gradually, rather than be subjected to a complete and drastic overhaul. They also insisted that such evolution should include both

258 259

Addison, The Road to 1945, 239–42. Report of the Annual Conference of the Labour Party 1945, 139.

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voluntary and public institutions.260 Although these emerging divisions had, of course, ruled out the prospect of legislation before the election, the fact remains that wartime exposure of the inadequacy of pre-war provision had accelerated the process of reform. The final step in the process was left to be taken, as we shall see, by the post-1945 Attlee administration. The Government’s response to the core proposals in the Beveridge Report came in the Social Insurance White Paper, published in September 1944, by which time Beveridge had himself become an MP and was able to participate in the parliamentary consideration of his proposal. In the White Paper, the Government accepted the broad sweep of the proposals—that participation would be compulsory for the whole working population, who would pay flat-rate contributions and who, in return, could claim flat-rate benefits. There were specific issues, however, on which the Government took a different view. It was not, for example, prepared to endorse the Beveridge proposal for the payment of unemployment benefit for an indefinite period, regarding this as open to abuse by the workshy. It opted for a maximum payment period of 30 weeks, though it proposed the payment of a discretionary allowance thereafter where the claimant agreed to undergo training designed to prepare him for further employment. A further issue to which the Government took exception was that of flat-rate benefits being set at “subsistence” level. The Government believed that “subsistence” implied rates which were adapted to individual needs, or which were automatically variable in relation to changes in the cost of living. It insisted that social insurance rates had to be based on averages and, therefore, should provide equal benefits for equal contributions. This would mean, of course, that a high/higher rate of benefit would of necessity have to be met by a high/higher rate of contribution. Quite separately, the White Paper accepted Beveridge’s view that the self-employed should be excluded from unemployment benefit, though not from other parts of the social insurance scheme. The whole system of income maintenance was to be overseen and co-ordinated by a new Ministry of Social Security. Two years later, when the new Labour government introduced its National Insurance Bill in the House of Commons, the same difficult issues which the Coalition Government had highlighted in its White Paper and which had been debated in the House thereafter—notably the duration and level of benefit payments, and the question of how to deal with the longterm unemployed—were still alive, and for the same reasons. The outcome of these further discussions will be dealt with in Chapter Seven.

260

Jefferys, “British Politics and Social Policy”, 136.

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Accepting, as most commentators do, that all the elements of what subsequently came to be known as the Welfare State had been thoroughly considered during the war years and that some of them, most notably those providing for child allowances and a unified and extended education system actually reached the statute book before the war was over, it is for consideration whether by the end of the war, there was an unstoppable, acceptable dynamic for the adoption of the wholesale changes which eventually constituted the Welfare State. If so, it must be asked where the essential impetus for this achievement truly lay. It is worth noting too, in terms of what the parties might have been seeking to achieve in the postwar world, that Beveridge was convinced that the system of social insurance he had advanced was designed not merely to abolish physical want, but to give a new sense of purpose to democracy and thus to promote national solidarity. High aspirations indeed! All of these issues—practical, political, and philosophical—are considered in the following chapters, starting with how the parties expressed their social reform and institutional aspirations during the 1945 general election.

CHAPTER FIVE THE GENERAL ELECTION OF 1945

Though the Coalition had lost eight by-elections to independent candidates between 1942 and 1945, the Conservative Party was widely expected to win the 1945 general election: it was inconceivable that the electorate could reject Mr. Churchill. Even Clement Attlee himself did not believe that he could be elected Prime Minister. Notwithstanding that in 1944 he had said he was detecting “a great swing to the left among the workers, among the fighters, who had formerly refused to consider our views”, Attlee thought that this would, at best, allow Labour to make a gain on their existing 154 seats.261 As he told Sir John Colville, “he reckoned that there might, with luck, be a Conservative majority of only some forty seats.”262 At the very worst, Conservatives anticipated a narrow majority or a Conservative-led Coalition, a view shared by many newspapers. How could the country not want to retain the war leader who had engineered victory from seemingly inevitable defeat? Did not war leaders always reap electoral benefits after their wartime successes? Lord Salisbury’s 1900 election victory had benefitted from the so-called Boer War “Mafeking” effect, and Lloyd George had swept the country in the 1918 “Khaki” election. Mr Churchill had “led the nation through a longer war, faced more terrible dangers, [exercised] a more faultless grip of strategy and had won an even higher renown amongst the statesmen of the world” than had Lloyd George.263 Would it not, therefore, inevitably follow that his wartime achievements would bring him the same measure of electoral success as his illustrious predecessor had enjoyed? Churchill was so confident that his Party would form the first post-war government that he had told King George VI, on the eve of the count, that he expected a majority of between 30 and 80. 261

John Bew, Citizen Clem: A Biography of Attlee (London: Riverrun, 2017), 321. John Colville, The Fringes of Power: Downing Street Diaries 1939–1955 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1985), 576. 263 Ronald B. McCallum and Alison Readman, The British General Election of 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1947), 234. 262

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There was also a widely-shared feeling among Conservatives that their Party had become the “natural party of Government.” Holding office and enjoying the power that accompanied it had become the accepted—and expected—order of things. Except for three years (1923–24 and 1929–31), there had been Conservative majorities in Parliament for 23 years, a phenomenon which opposition newspapers customarily referred to as “Tory rule.” What was obviously not acknowledged at the time was that Churchill’s bid to become a post-war leader, trading on his wartime heroics, had reawakened in the minds of many, memories of his pre-war record as “hammer of the working class, supporter of fascism in Italy and Spain, and implacable opponent of self-government for India.”264 The only pessimist within the ranks of the Cabinet was R.A. Butler, who argued that the Party was “in no fit state to risk an early encounter with the electorate.” Butler’s comments enraged Lord Beaverbrook, who had warned him that “if you speak to the Prime Minister like that, you will not be considered for a job in the next Conservative Government.”265 But beyond the inner circle, others expressed concern. Robert Boothby, for example, MP since 1924 for Aberdeen and Kincardine East, and fresh from a period of service as a liaison officer with the Free French Forces, “was under no illusions about the election” and did not doubt that the Conservative Party was headed for a stiff defeat.266 Nevertheless, about a month before the election, Christopher Hollis summarised the view of many of his colleagues in the Conservative Party when he wrote that “Whatever exuberant rhetoric may from time to time pretend, nobody seriously thinks that the Labour Party have any chance of gaining a clear majority at the election, and no one pretends even as a joke, that the Liberals have any chance of obtaining such a majority.”267 Alan Clark’s view was that whilst a few back-benchers may have been “dimly” aware of the possibility of electoral defeat, hardly anybody in the Government shared the feeling.268 The Parliament elected in 1935 would normally have expired by November 1940, but it was extended from year to year—as a result of an electoral truce agreed by the Chief Whips of the Conservative, Liberal, and 264

Andrew Gamble, The Conservative Nation (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974), 29. 265 Howard, RAB, 145–46. 266 Robert R. James, Bob Boothby: A Portrait of Churchill’s Ally (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1991). 267 Christopher Hollis, “The Conservative Opportunity,” New English Review, Vol. 11, No. 2 (June 1945): 100, quoted in John D. Hoffman, The Conservative Party in Opposition: 1945–51 (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1964), 21. 268 Clark, The Tories, 253.

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Labour parties—by a series of annual Prolongation Bills, until it had run nearly twice its statutory course. There had, in fact, been an atmosphere of impending dissolution in the House since October 1944 when, on the Second Reading of the latest Prolongation Bill, Churchill had made it clear that he expected that the 1944 legislation would be the last of its kind. The “swing of the pendulum” theory, which Lord Salisbury had mistakenly assumed would undermine the Party’s chances in 1900, had operated imperfectly in the inter-war years and could therefore hardly be used to predict the outcome of events in 1945. The pendulum did swing, of course—and with a vengeance—for reasons examined below, but not as a result of some automatic rule of political nature that demands change after a party has been in office for a pre-determined period. W.W. Astor was wrong to claim that “the primary cause of the Conservative defeat was the natural swing of the pendulum”, although he did concede that the “pendulum had swung faster and farther than anyone expected”.269 Moreover, any expectation of such a swing in 1945 was lessened, or so it seemed to many, by the fact that, unlike in 1918, both Conservatives and Socialists were unequivocally agreed on the fundamental question of the need to bring the Nazi war criminals to justice. This was true, even if the Conservatives saw them as enemies of the nation and of society, while the Socialists regarded them more as oppressors of the working class and enemies of the people. Finally, on the economic front, on 9 July the Financial Times reported that election week had produced “buoyant markets”, and nearly two weeks later the newspaper was still assessing the markets as “cheerful”, assessments generally regarded as a reflection of confidence in Conservative rule. For those who were prepared to study the available evidence rather than trust to their gut instincts, there were uneasy signs that such confidence might be misplaced. Opinion polling was still in its infancy, but as events transpired, it was the Gallup polls commissioned by the left-leaning News Chronicle which were to prove the most accurate measure of public intentions. Surprisingly, given the manner in which pollsters in recent years have struggled to find the most reliable sampling methodology—one needs to look no further than the performance of the opinion polls in the 2016 EU referendum and the 2017 general election—the newspaper’s final poll, conducted before the start of actual voting, predicted a likely Labour vote of 47 per cent versus 41 per cent for the Conservatives and their allies. This proved to be accurate at the end of the day to within about 1 per cent. Despite 269

William W. Astor, “The Conservative Party in Opposition”, New English Review, Vol. 12, No. 4 (April 1946): 344.

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all the caution and uncertainty surrounding polling at the time, this Gallup poll suggested that a Labour victory, if not the landslide which eventually transpired, was a real possibility. The News Chronicle’s considered opinion, however, was that the margin—whichever side it favoured—would be small, with no clear majority for any party. Its caution may have been reinforced by a Daily Express poll, which showed that 54 per cent of those polled believed that the Conservatives would win, against 38 per cent who believed that the Labour Party would prevail. Despite accumulating evidence that the majority of the electorate were strongly Labour, even Mass-Observation concluded that “whatever Party or group Winston Churchill heads will win.” On balance, the climate of opinion seemed to be running in Labour’s favour. The Daily Herald, the Daily Mirror, and the New Chronicle were vociferous in their support for Labour, and outdid the somewhat defensive support of the Daily Telegraph and Daily Sketch for the Conservatives. The Times was uncommitted, and the Daily Express fiercely anti-Labour. The Manchester Guardian was rather more antiConservative than openly pro-Labour. At opposite ends of the spectrum, the influence of the Beaverbrook press was huge, and led Ernest Bevin to comment that “I have no quarrel with the Prime Minister, but I have had enough these last five years of Lord Beaverbrook. I object to this country being run from Fleet Street.”270 As well as a newspaper owner, Beaverbrook was, of course, a key adviser to the Prime Minister. At the other end, the role of the Daily Mirror in communicating the Labour message cannot be overestimated. Paul Addison describes “the transformation of [the paper] to a mass circulation working-class paper thriving on new techniques of ‘human interest’ and sensationalism and tub-thumping anti-Tory politics.”271 Churchill had, unwisely as it turned out, committed himself in the previous autumn to an election at “the end of the German war”, and acknowledged in his memoirs that “from the moment of the German surrender the public mind [had] turned swiftly from national rejoicing to party strife.”272 In this atmosphere, and mindful of the need to ensure that everybody who was entitled to vote had a fair chance of doing so, he was unable to persuade Attlee that the Coalition should be allowed to continue until the war with Japan had been won. For his part, Attlee submitted a 270 Mervyn Jones, Michael Foot (London: Gollancz, 1994), quoted in Paul Dimoldenberg, Cheer Churchill. Vote Labour: The Story of the 1945 General Election (Amazon, 2020), 81. 271 Addison, The Road to 1945, 151. 272 Winston S. Churchill, The History of the Second World War, Vol. VI: Triumph and Tragedy (London: Penguin Books, 1985), 588.

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counter-proposal that the election should be delayed until October to allow a new Electoral Register to be compiled. While some leading Conservatives agreed with Attlee’s suggestion on the grounds that it would give the Party badly-needed time to improve its state of readiness for the election, most disagreed, believing that they should take the earliest opportunity to exploit the undoubted popular appreciation of Churchill’s war achievements. In the course of these exchanges, Churchill even suggested that a referendum might be held as a means of taking “the Nation’s opinion…on whether the life of [the Coalition] should be further prolonged.” When Attlee rejected his proposal, however, Churchill tendered his resignation on May 23 1945 and formed a “Caretaker Government”. The dates and timing of the various election stages were agreed with the other parties and Parliament had to be dissolved on 15 June.273 The organisation of the election did not aid any form of forecasting. In the first place, there was the period of uncertainty between Churchill’s resignation on 23 May, fifteen days after the cessation of hostilities in Europe; the dissolution of Parliament on 15 June; the designated polling day for most of the country on 5 July; and the announcement of the final results on 26 July 1945. The latter hiatus was dictated by the need to gather and count the votes of those serving in the Armed Forces and the Merchant Navy, as well as certain classes of civilians necessarily residing abroad on work of national importance. This process was inevitably complicated, and there were many cases of failures to register, of voting papers not received, and of double-counting of direct votes and proxy votes. Service electors amounted to nearly 3 million out of an overall electorate of almost 33 million. In addition to these difficulties, the movement of people around the country after the destruction of their old homes, or returning to their original addresses from the places to which they had been evacuated, presented formidable difficulties for the compilation of the civilian register. Furthermore, the register itself was completed rapidly by largely untrained staff. The inadequacies of the register were the subject of complaints by both the Liberal and Labour parties. Whatever influence the psephological data may have had on shaping public opinion, it was a fact that the Conservative Party was unwilling to acknowledge what was happening, even though the byelections held during the war had not favoured it, with Sir Richard Acland’s “Christian socialist” Common Wealth Party winning a number of seats. The Party convinced itself that the conditions under which these by-elections had been held had been highly abnormal, with factors such as conscription, 273

Churchill, Second World War, Vol. VI, 515–19.

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outdated registers, enforced labour movement, and evacuation distorting voting patterns. Conservative complacency on this score had been reinforced by victory in the only by-election to be held after VE-day, when Churchill was justifiably being lauded as a national hero.274 The apotheosis of Churchill the warrior did not, however, encompass other aspects of his public record. His service to the Conservative Party left him unappealing to a large part of the voting population as a future peacetime leader. Indeed, he was widely regarded by working people as their “most intransigent political enemy.” As Alan Sked and Chris Cook note, “the voters refused to forget…the depression years, the unemployment and the General Strike…the failures of the inter-war period when political life had been dominated exclusively by the Tory Party.” Churchill’s wartime glories were not sufficient to separate him in the minds of many from their “deep-seated revulsion”, as Lord Hailsham called it, “against the principles [and] practice[s] of the Conservative Party.”275 These conflicting aspects of Churchill’s record—wartime hero, but quintessential peacetime Tory—were cleverly exploited by the Labour Party during the election campaign. John Ramsden records that: anti-Conservative speakers would make reference to Churchill’s record, and the debt owed him by the people of this country. Great and enthusiastic applause always greeted this. Then they would go on to say that despite his services to the nation no man, Churchill or any other, had the right to dictate to the people of the country how they should vote. Invariably this brought even louder applause.276

During the campaign, Churchill decided to carry out most of his electioneering over the radio. When he actually ventured forth publicly, in a somewhat Presidential style, he was, at first, received with acclaim by cheering crowds. As election time neared, however, he encountered hostility. This was due, perhaps, to the offence and growing irritation caused by his warning, contained in his first broadcast speech (allegedly drafted for him by Brendan Bracken and Beaverbrook), of “imminent repression: the socialist hand over your mouth and around your windpipe.” Going to even further extremes, his speech warned that “the Socialist system could not be 274

The Newport by-election, held on 17 May 1945, was won for the Conservatives by Ronald Bell, with a majority of 2,702. Bell lost his seat in the General Election to his Labour opponent, Peter Freeman. Dimoldenberg, Cheer Churchill, 33. 275 Alan Sked and Chris Cook, Post-War Britain: A Political History, 4th edn. (London: Penguin 1993), 17–18. 276 John Ramsden, The Age of Churchill and Eden 1940–1957 (London: Longman, 1995), 68–69.

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established without a political police, a Gestapo.”277 Many could simply not understand why Churchill was uttering “petty polemics against his late colleagues, and likening their politics to those of the enemy, against whom they had fought together in mortal combat for five long, perilous years.”278 In the words of Leo Amery, once the election had been decided upon “Churchill jumped straight off his pedestal” and tore into “poor old Attlee” with a “fantastical, exaggerated onslaught.” Some Conservatives, like Chief Whip James Stuart, liked the “robust” approach. Others, such as Anthony Eden, who was kept out of the campaign by an ulcer, doubted whether the “sordid medium of Party politics was the best way to construct that better England which the electorate wanted.”279 The Economist labelled the speech “pernicious nonsense.” Going even further, Vita Sackville West described all his radio performances as “confused and woolly, unconstructive and so wordy it is impossible to pick out any concrete impression from them.”280 Yet the vituperation he encountered on the stump in such places as Glasgow, as a result of his more extreme pronouncements, was generally attributed by his supporters to Communist sympathisers. Many historians have come to share Vita Sackville West’s view in seeing Churchill’s “confused and woolly” approach as a symptom of the uncertainty over the direction of the Party. David Willetts suggests that there was a “policy vacuum” that harmed the Party during the election. The Conservatives “had lost the battle of ideas...having been on the intellectual defensive since the publication of the Beveridge Report in November 1942.” As a result, the Party was divided between those who sought a “social revolution” and those who clung to “old Toryism.”281 W.L. Burn expresses the same view about the “pseudo-Conservatism, shaken in morale by the intellectual superiority which they had allowed the Labour Party to assume.” As a result, he argues, “the Conservatives lacked a doctrine. It was

277

A.J.P. Taylor claims that Beaverbrook had nothing to do with the drafting of the speech. It was, Taylor asserts, “Churchill’s own inspiration, settled at Chequers and approved only by Randolph Churchill and James Stuart.” Referenced by Dimoldenberg, Cheer Churchill, 65. 278 McCallum and Readman, The British General Election, 142. 279 Charmley, A History of Conservative Politics, 121. 280 Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Vol. 8: Never Despair, 1945–1965 (London: Heinemann, 1988) 281 David Willetts, “The New Conservatism? 1945–1951”, in Recovering Power: The Conservatives in Opposition, eds. Stuart Ball and Anthony Seldon (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 170–71; Charmley, A History of Conservative Politics, 125.

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fatal that they should have lacked a method too.”282 Churchill must bear a large share of responsibility for the lack of a doctrine, a judgement endorsed by John Ramsden. Making allowances for some swing of the pendulum and for the emergence of a new generation of voters, his explanation for the election defeat lies in Churchill’s resolve to fight the election on party politics. The result of this was that “the great national programme was allowed to slip into the background.” The truth, in Ramsden’s view, was that: there was in fact much common ground between the policies of all the parties contesting the election but that Churchill’s brand of Conservatism— requiring an unshakeable commitment to the preservation of the nation’s traditional institutions such as Church and State, and pursuing a robust patriotism, all of which had been under threat during the war—meant that he was ill-disposed to make a significant contribution, when it was most needed, to Party policy and philosophy. In any case, he was concerned that those engaged in rethinking the Party’s philosophy were leading it to “pink socialism.”283

In normal peacetime elections, many results are declared on the night of the poll and pundits use exit poll returns to predict the final outcome, often with a considerable degree of accuracy. In 1945, however, the dearth of information during the three weeks which elapsed between the initial polling and the final count dulled speculation about the probability of a major upset. The general expectation remained that the election would produce a narrow majority for the Conservatives, though there were some signs of a decline in optimism in the Conservative press. While it must have become increasingly evident to the counting staffs that a major upset was in the offing, they had been sworn to secrecy. Even after the count of proxy and service votes had been completed on 25 July, there was no hint in any of the news outlets, even on the following morning, of what had occurred. When it became clear later in the day, however, that Labour had made startling gains, dramatic coverage was prepared for the next morning’s papers. These contained lists of the leading Conservative politicians, such as Harold Macmillan, Brendan Bracken, and Leo Amery, who had been ousted. The verdict was unmistakeable. The strength of the parties in the House of Commons had been almost reversed, and the Liberals, who might 282

William L. Burn, “The General Election in Retrospect”, Nineteenth Century 142 (1947): 17–25, quoted by Willetts in “The New Conservatism?”, 169. 283 John Ramsden, “From Churchill to Heath”, in The Conservatives: A History of their Origins to 1965, ed. Lord Butler (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1977), 413–15.

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have expected to hold some sort of balance of power, had been reduced to a rump. The final figures showed Labour with 393 seats, the Conservatives with 189, and the Liberal Party with 12. Minor parties possessed 46 seats between them, giving Labour a majority of 146 over all of the other parties combined. The Labour share of the vote was 48 per cent, against 40 per cent for the Conservatives. In the last election in 1935, the Conservative share of the vote had been 53 per cent, and the Labour share 38 per cent. The size of the swing had only two historical parallels—in the elections of 1832 after the Great Reform Bill, which gave a Whig or Liberal majority of 307, and the election of 1906, which transformed a Conservative majority of 134 at the previous election to a Liberal one of 356. Arrangements had been made for Churchill to receive the election results as they came in on 26 July. As he wrote: The latest view of the Conservative Central Office was that we should obtain a substantial majority. I had not burdened myself unduly with the subject while occupied with the grave business of the [Potsdam] Conference. On the whole I accepted the view of the party managers and went to bed [on the 25 July] in the belief that the British people would wish me to continue my work. My hope was that it would be possible to reconstitute the National Coalition Government in the proportions of the new House of Commons…However, just before dawn I woke suddenly with a sharp stab of almost physical pain. A hitherto subconscious conviction that we were beaten broke forth and dominated my mind. The power to shape the future would be denied me. [At nine o’clock], I went into the Map Room [and] the first results had started to come in…By noon it was clear that the Socialists would have a majority.284

Churchill resigned immediately, without waiting for the House to record a vote of no confidence in a defeated government, which had been the usual practice in such circumstances. As he put it shortly afterwards, “The verdict of the electors had been so overwhelmingly expressed that I did not wish to remain even for an hour responsible for their affairs.”285 When Stalin and Churchill had met at the Potsdam Conference in mid-July, Stalin had revealed that his sources predicted a Conservative majority, and the optimism that this engendered, together with the confidence emanating from Central Office, left Churchill personally affronted by the election result.286

284

Churchill, Second World War, Vol. VI, 583. Churchill, Second World War, Vol. VI, 583. 286 Churchill, Second World War, Vol. VI, 549. 285

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Apart from a five-hour conference of defeated candidates presided over by Ralph Assheton, the Party Chairman, three months after the election, there is no evidence that any formal assessment of the election loss was undertaken or even contemplated although differing opinions of why there had been such a mass flight from the Party abounded. In the note of the conference which he had prepared, Assheton drew Churchill’s attention to contributions by Flight-Lieutenant Reginald Maudling who had failed to win the Heston and Isleworth seat, and by Captain Aubrey Jones who had been unsuccessful in South-Eastern Essex. Maudling and Jones represented the opposite wings of the Party. Maudling’s view was that “the Party [had] lost the trust of the British people who believed that the Conservative leaders were only interested in calculating how ‘little they [could] give away from the previous position.’” New policies were needed. Jones, meanwhile, excoriated “the Tory reformers” for believing that the Party was “old and crusted.” In his view, the Party had not been overly Conservative at the election, but rather it was “not Conservative enough.” The Party would only be rejuvenated when it developed “a die-hard doctrine.”287 Whether Assheton regarded himself as a diehard, he had made a speech in Leeds in February 1945, when political activity in the constituencies was beginning to stir, that was much closer to the position of Jones than that of Maudling. Whatever Assheton’s intentions, the speech had been widely regarded at the time as an exposition of the policies on which the Party would fight the forthcoming election, whenever that might be. Assheton had cautioned against the perils of “nationalisation and encroaching bureaucracy”, and had urged people to see that the Conservatives persistently stood for “the betterment of the condition of the people” and for personal liberties.288 After polling his regional officers, Assheton had warned Churchill of possible defeat, but he had been ignored and all that he had achieved was the elimination of Central Office from the election campaign. The various and conflicting diagnoses such as those advanced by Maudling and Jones serve to illustrate the confused condition of the Party in the aftermath of the election defeat. The most commonly expressed reason was probably that the roots of the electoral debacle lay in the memories which the “mature” electorate had of the Baldwin and Chamberlain administrations of the pre-war period. Such a reaction had, in a sense, been anticipated by Churchill when he had addressed the House of Commons five years earlier—four days after the fall of France, a fortnight after the evacuation from Dunkirk, and when he had been Prime Minister for little 287 288

Churchill Papers, CHUR 2/1 A/144, 164 and 166. McCallum and Readman, The British General Election, 11.

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more than a month. As he had admitted to the House, “[t]here are many who would hold an inquest in the House of Commons on the conduct of the Government…during the years which led up to [the present] catastrophe. They seek to indict those who were responsible for the conduct of our affairs.”289 When the feelings Churchill had recognised resurfaced in 1945, they were reinforced by powerful expressions of resentment about the reasons for the war, in particular, the effect of the pre-war policy of appeasement, promulgated in publications such as the 1940 Left Book Club’s Guilty Men. The tone of Guilty Men is captured in its references to the “deadening influence…of Baldwin and Chamberlain…and their regimes of little men”, and in the following extract: “Dunkirk…Flesh against steel. The flesh of heroes, but none the less flesh. It is the story of an army doomed before they took the field.”290 The book also went to some lengths to contrast Lloyd George’s promises during the First World War with what had actually transpired thereafter, offering an expression of scepticism about the ability of politicians to fulfil their electoral promises. The Left Book Club had been launched in 1936 by Victor Gollancz, with the assistance of John Strachey, Harold Laski, and Kingsley Martin. In the period between the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and the Hitler–Stalin Pact in 1939, these men were dubbed the “four pink horsemen of the socialist apocalypse” by Beaverbrook’s Sunday Express. Gollancz and Laski had been at New College, Oxford, at the same time. A particularly influential publication of the Book Club was a book, Tory MP, by “Simon Haxey” (a pseudonym). Written in 1939, it argued that “Baldwinism, corporatism and a reluctance to confront Hitler were directly related to the conspicuous commercial interests and property-holdings across the Empire of many Tories.”291 Despite a decline in the Club’s fortunes after the Hitler– Stalin Pact, it managed to survive the war, and though it died “a quiet death” in 1948, it made a substantial impact with many voters immediately after the war.292 The publication during the 1930s of realistic novels and descriptive works by writers such as Walter Greenwood (Love on the Dole, 1933); J. B. Priestley (The English Journey, 1934); George Orwell (The

289 Quoted in Philip Collins, When They Go Low, We Go High (London: 4th Estate, 2017), 127. 290 “Cato”, Guilty Men (London: Gollancz, 1949), 16 and 21. 291 “Simon Haxey”, Tory MP (London: Gollancz, 1939), discussed by Willetts in “The New Conservatism?”, 169. 292 Isaac Kramnick and Barry Sheerman, Harold Laski: A Life on the Left (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1993), 364–65.

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Road to Wigan Pier, 1937); and A. J. Cronin (The Citadel, 1937) had awakened left-wing consciousness. The influence of such popular literature was arguably greater after the war than when the works had first been published: it was after victory had been achieved that the poorer sections of the population were expecting bad housing, inadequate health services, unemployment and wretched living conditions to be addressed as a reward for the efforts they had made during the struggle against Germany and Japan. Many also felt strongly that Labour had had “a better war” than the Conservatives and had emerged from it, despite the massive presence of Churchill, with the more impressive top team. Not surprisingly, this was vigorously contested by some Conservatives. Lord Balfour, for example, wrote soon after the election that: Certainly we can dismiss the idea that we were at a disadvantage in personalities. Mr. Churchill had dominated the world stage as a war leader…Nice Mr Attlee’s dim little glow could not compare with Mr. Churchill’s beacon light of courage. The ministers of his government can stand comparison with those of the Socialist government…our list of candidates was certainly as distinguished, as vigorous, as representative, and as youthful as that of the Socialists.293

Nevertheless, the view of McCallum and Readman in their Nuffield election study was that the “Labour Party presented…a powerfully co-ordinated team of leaders” to the electorate, while the Conservatives simply provided Churchill on his record.294 Until almost the last moment, the Conservatives had hoped that a Conservative-led National Coalition might coast to victory, as in the “Coupon election” of 1918. This hope was shattered by Labour’s refusal to support the continuation of a Coalition Government. What strategy, therefore, ought to take its place? The comparative merits of the Parties’ manifestos, when they were produced, were naturally going to be a critical factor. (The manifestos are discussed in detail below.) During the campaign, the Labour leaders’ prominence in the constituencies was evidence of careful planning, and stood in striking contrast to the lack of co-ordination of the activities of the Conservative Party leaders. One of the most significant contrasts between the two Party leaders is provided by the approaches that they adopted to their first radio broadcasts. Churchill’s first broadcast on 4 June, and Attlee’s reply on the following evening, have generally been accepted as having had a profound 293

Lord Balfour of Inchrye, “After the Conservative Defeat”, New English Review, Vol. 11, No. 7 (November 1945). 294 McCallum and Readman, The British General Election, 128.

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influence on the final verdict of the electorate. The tone of the two addresses was startlingly different. Churchill was “pugilistic”: “a Socialist policy is abhorrent to British ideas of freedom…there can be no doubt that Socialism is inseparably interwoven with totalitarianism and the abject worship of the state…a free Parliament is odious to the Socialist doctrinaire.” Then, he made his ill-judged (and possibly fatal) reference to the Socialist need for a “Gestapo” to repress public criticism of the system. Whilst Beaverbrook was blamed for inserting this thought, informed opinion later suggests that it was Churchill’s own work. Indeed, he had been recently influenced by Friedrich von Hayek’s 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom, and its message that socialist state planning led inexorably to a totalitarian police state; Nazi Germany, for instance, was a product of both state socialism and anticapitalism. Ralph Assheton, the Conservative Party Chairman, obtained fifty copies of the book on publication.295 The Road to Serfdom was an enormous best-seller and had already been reviewed at length in almost every British newspaper as well as in various academic journals. Assheton arranged for these reviews to be sent to leading figures in the Party, together with a summary of the book’s contents. He also sent copies, mischievously perhaps, to Herbert Morrison and Clement Attlee. Lord Croft, described as a Churchill “camp-follower”, echoed Hayek’s view when he said, in somewhat colourful terms, that “the Labour party wished to impose upon the British people the crude ideas of the German Marx, developed by the German Engels, and regiment our life in a manner not very different from that of National Socialism in Germany.”296 He also introduced a note of anti-Semitism into the debate, by asking whether the British people wanted to follow a government whose ministers were dominated apparently by an individual with “the good old British name of Laski.”297 Assheton himself had already spoken in similar vein in April 1945:

295 Friedrich A. von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1944). 296 Wilfred Fienburgh, 25 Momentous Years: A 25th Anniversary in the History of the Daily Herald (London: Odhams, 1955). 297 Reporting on Laski’s Labour Party Conference speech, the National Review commented that “[a]nything less like the British workingman than an international Jew could well not be imagined…We do not know what we have done to deserve Mr Laski, but there he is, sneering at us and decrying us and our very English Prime Minister, but though he has so much contempt for this country, with no thought of returning to the country, which ever it was, that his parents came from and with no idea about the land he happened to be born in, save to make a revolution in it.’

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Not all Tories, however—in particular, Tory reformers like Quintin Hogg, Harold Macmillan, and R.A. Butler—agreed with the ideas in the book, and questioned Hayek’s denunciation of the “Middle Way.” Chief Whip James Stuart told John Colville, Churchill’s private secretary, that, “[i]f that is the way he [Churchill] wants to conduct the campaign, he must decide. He is the Leader of the Party. But it is not my idea of how to win the election.”299 Whether Churchill had read Hayek is doubtful, but he had read Assheton’s April speech summarising Hayek’s position and had sent him a congratulatory letter.300 Robin Harris’s view is that “Churchill’s vulgarisation of Hayek...and the notoriety which it attracted...was one of several intellectual disservices he rendered to the Conservative cause in the later years of his career.”301 Attlee described Churchill’s radio diatribe as an attempt to persuade those who had accepted his wartime leadership to continue their support out of gratitude. Understandably he dismissed Churchill’s depiction of the threat of Socialism as a travesty of the policy of the Labour Party. “The voice we heard last night was that of Mr. Churchill, but the mind was that of Lord Beaverbrook.” In a quiet and calm manner, Attlee explained to the listeners why Labour had decided not to sustain the Coalition until the end of the Japanese war, and then went on to outline his Party’s policies. Thereafter, the reproach that the Conservative Party was attempting to exploit the fears of the electorate became a staple item in Labour’s attacks on their opponents. Herbert Morrison sustained the attack when he asked why then Churchill had entrusted him with the Home Office portfolio in National Review (January 1945), quoted in Kramnick and Sheerman, Harold Laski, 479. 298 Quoted in Cockett, Thinking the Unthinkable, 93. 299 John Colville, Footsteps in Time (London: Century Publishing, 1985), 206–07. 300 Cockett, Thinking the Unthinkable, 91. 301 Harris, The Conservatives, 321.

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1940, since this position placed him in charge of policing, which stood at odds with Churchill’s insinuation that he, as a Socialist, would introduce a Gestapo and its methods when the war was over.302 Arguments over the nature of Socialism arose repeatedly. Harold Laski, chairman of the National Executive of the Labour Party, aired his view that when Attlee attended the Potsdam Conference with Churchill, he should remain a mute observer and should also avoid making any commitments which, without the approval of the Party Executive or the Parliamentary Labour Party, might appear to indicate that Labour’s foreign policy would be simply a continuation of the Coalition’s wartime policy. What Laski did not know when he published his views in the Daily Herald was that Attlee had already consulted with Labour’s parliamentary leaders, and they had agreed that he should accept Churchill’s invitation. Laski’s intervention was blazoned in Beaverbrook’s Daily Express under the banner headline “OBSCURE LASKI CAUCUS WILL GIVE ORDERS.”303 Churchill had told the House of Commons that Attlee’s presence would provide “an opportunity for [showing] that although governments may change and parties may quarrel, we stand together on some of the main aspects of foreign policy.”304 Laski’s statement was represented by Churchill and his colleagues as a warning to Attlee that he had no authority to bind his Party to anything which was “unchecked by any official pronouncement” from the leaders of the Labour Party. Brendan Bracken saw it as tantamount to saying that the National Executive could arrogate to itself the right to dictate Party policy, and thus undermine the responsibility of the Party in Parliament to the electors whom it professed to represent. Conservative speakers took to referring to “Gauleiter Laski”, and “the Secret Socialist foreign policy”, and to Attlee himself as “a ventriloquist’s dummy sitting on Laski’s knee.” Labour’s future foreign policy, it was suggested, might set aside decisions taken at the highest possible international level designed to shape the future of the post-war world. Particularly prominent in spreading this sort of alarm was Lord Beaverbrook, who wrote in his newspaper, the Daily Express, that “Laski [was] aiming at the destruction of the Parliamentary system of Great Britain [and setting up] in its place the dictatorship of something commonly called the National Executive.” This was, in part, in response to an article by Labour’s Ernest Bevin in The Times, in which he objected to “the country

302

McCallum and Readman, The British General Election, 142–44. Daily Express, 16 June 1945. 304 Harris, Attlee, 127. 303

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being ruled from Fleet Street, however big the circulation, instead of from Parliament.”305 The Labour Party represented such attacks as further examples of the campaign of fear being waged by their opponents, preferring to overlook the fact that only a little more than a month earlier, Laski had told Attlee in a “difficult” letter that there was a strong feeling in the Party that “the continuance of [his] leadership…[was] a grave handicap to [its] hopes of victory in the coming election”, and that he should resign as leader “for the sake of the Party.”306 Attlee simply replied that he had noted the contents of the letter and wrote to Churchill, in a public letter, that there seems to be great public advantage on the main lines of policy in preserving and presenting to the world at this time that unity on foreign policy which was maintained throughout the last five years. I do not anticipate that we shall differ on the main lines of policy which we have discussed together so often.307

In his next radio broadcast, however, Churchill still claimed that Labour was a Party where the “tail wagged the dog”, to which Laski responded that if there was a problem it existed only in Churchill’s mind. Beaverbrook did not let the matter rest and his newspaper gave it prominence under the headline: “SOCIALIST SPLIT; ATTLEE REPUDIATES LASKI ORDER.”308 Conservative designs to maintain their attacks on Laski were by and large thwarted, however, when he issued writs for libel against a number of local and national newspapers. These publications contained reports that in an election address in Newark, Laski had said that “if Labour could not obtain what it needed by general consent, we shall have to use violence, even if it means revolution.” The Daily Express headline had read “NEW LASKI SENSATION; SOCIALISM EVEN IF IT MEANS VIOLENCE.”309 Laski claimed that he had warned that “great changes were so urgent in this country that if they were not made by consent, they would be made by violence.”310 Churchill was advised that while the matter was sub judice, any public reference to it would incur the risk of heavy penalties for contempt of court. He might have been comforted had he had known—which he probably did not—that Labour Party 305

Daily Express, 20 June 1945; The Times, 13 June 1945. Laski Papers, LP/LAS/38/21. 307 Henry Pelling, The Labour Governments, 1945–1951 (London: Macmillan, 1984), 25. 308 Daily Express, 23 June 1945. 309 Kramnick and Sheerman, Harold Laski, 467. 310 Daily Herald, 21 June 1945. 306

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Headquarters was in despair at the damage which it believed Laski was inflicting on the Party. Whatever else one might say about the 1945 election, therefore, it was not lacking in ideological disputation. Many saw the rival ideologies on display as drawn from the London School of Economics: Hayek had been Professor of Economic Science and Statistics there since 1931, and Laski had been Professor of Political Science since 1926. All this leaves open the question of the extent to which the party manifestos reflected this ideological difference in a clear and convincing manner. As the war with Germany neared its end, leading Conservative members of the Government were summoned to the Cabinet Room of No. 10 to give their views on when an election should be held. Most were strongly in favour of holding an election as soon as possible after victory over Germany was achieved. Of the inner circle only Butler, as we have seen, advocated delay, principally on the grounds that the Party was unprepared for an election, in terms both of its policies and its organisation.311 Since 1941, Butler had been chairman of the Party’s PostWar Problems Central Committee (PWPCC), constructed—or at least presented—as a research body, so as not to infringe the electoral truce. Given that the Conservative Research Department (CRD) had been closed down on the outbreak of war, the Committee’s role was essentially to produce a policy platform on which the Party could stand at the next election, whenever that might be. Interestingly, it has been suggested that the Fabian Society, seen as Labour’s counterpart to the CRD, had “gone underground” and into uniform in such bodies as the Army Bureau of Current Affairs (ABCA) and the Army Education Corps, both of which, it was later suggested, acted as effective propaganda machines for the Labour Party.312 ABCA had been created under direction from the Adjutant General, Sir Ronald Adam, by W.E. Williams, a leading light in the Workers’ Educational Association and secretary of the British Institute of Adult Education. Adam and Williams had noted that discussion groups and Brains Trusts were extremely popular with troops.313 Yet as one Tory later put it somewhat hysterically, “Williams smothered the troops in seditious literature…he was a tremendous Leftie.” Another Conservative supporter claimed that “[a]lmost every education officer in the Army was Labour and was preaching Labour doctrines.”314 Quintin Hogg maintained that Colonel George Wigg, Labour’s candidate in Dudley, was manipulating ABCA for political ends and that Churchill had 311

Howard, RAB, 145–46. Howard, RAB, 141. 313 Harrington and Young, The 1945 Revolution, 110. 314 Harrington and Young, The 1945 Revolution, 111. 312

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asked Hogg in October 1942 to “[w]ind up this business as quickly and decently as possible and set the persons concerned to useful work.”315 Whatever the exact truth, the fact is that votes returned from the forces overseas ran 9 to 1 in favour of Labour, and the suspicion that ABCA’s activities were subversive has endured to this day in Conservative circles.316 As a result of his PWPCC involvement, Butler should have been regarded as better informed than most of his colleagues at the No. 10 meeting about the Party’s state-of-readiness for an early election. His views, though, were largely dismissed, and were rejected in particularly scathing terms by Lord Beaverbrook. By the time the election was called, Butler had been made Minister of Labour and National Service but had scarcely settled into the position when he was given the task of devising the Party’s election programme. Since he had warned that the Party did not have a convincing collection of policies to lay before the electorate, Butler’s prescription was to fall back on the old Baldwin formula of “Safety First.” In a radio broadcast, for example, he said, in marked contrast to Churchill’s “Gestapo” threat, that “progress can best be achieved by the patient fitting of different points of view into an agreed plan, and not by throwing everything upside down.” This was not a rallying-cry, one might suppose, calculated to excite many voters. It was probably of little comfort to him that his earlier warnings were ultimately justified. Indeed, the Chief Whip wrote to Butler that “I do not forget that you were against fighting when we did—however, it is done, and with dire results.”317 The Conservative campaign caused general dismay in the ranks of the Right Progressives, the group of younger Conservatives who, having come together in 1943 to put pressure on the Government to take speedy action on the Beveridge Report, had coalesced into the Tory Reform Committee. Eventually numbering 41 MPs, among them Lord Hinchingbrooke, Quintin Hogg, Peter Thorneycroft, and Hugh Molson, the Committee developed into an organised faction pledged to support a new political settlement. Later research revealed that many of them “on the basis of 315

Arthur Marwick, The Home Front (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976), quoted in Dimoldenberg, Cheer Churchill, 88. 316 Peter (Lord) Carrington, later to be Margaret Thatcher’s Foreign Secretary, explained matters in the following way. “In my squadron in France in 1945, there was not one single man who would vote for the Conservative party, not one. [But] this was partly due to the fact that quite a large number of them were unemployed before the war and had [had] a pretty awful time and they remembered it,” Paul Addison, Now the War is Over (London: BBC/Cape, 1985), quoted in Dimoldenberg, Cheer Churchill, 87. 317 Butler Papers G17, letter from James Stuart, 5 August 1945.

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impressions gained from discussions with the troops [they had encountered] had independently reached the conclusion that it was politically necessary for the Conservative Party to change its public image.”318 The Committee published a manifesto for private circulation, and a series of pamphlets. In one pamphlet, Lord Hinchingbrooke wrote of: the desire that exists in the Progressive Right to be rid of the incubus of finance and the control of big business, to make money the servant of the enterprise, not its master, to rebuild our country after the war not with the thought of money gain but with the thought of social purpose.319

Hinchingbrooke also excoriated “the financiers and speculators [who had crept] unnoticed into the fold of Conservatism to insult the Party with their vote at elections…these men should collect their baggage and depart.” He envisaged a measure of state control over certain industries, to maintain the unity between capital and labour that had been found during the war. As we have seen, Hogg told the House of Commons that “if you do not give the people social reform, they are going to give you social revolution.”320 He and the other Tory Reformers thought they had found in the Beveridge Report a cause through which Conservatism could be revitalised. This would have involved the repudiation of much of the interwar Conservatism and identified the Party whole-heartedly with wartime reforms. Yet these were very much minority views in the Conservative Party, with diehards warning of the dangers of a drift to Socialism.321 In retrospect, however—and of critical importance—the election defeat in the longer term served to consolidate the grip of the Right Progressives, largely in consequence of the generational shift which the heavy loss of seats in the election precipitated in the membership of the Parliamentary Party. Sixty per cent of the pre-war Conservative MPs lost their seats in 1945. As Butler later wrote, “the overwhelming electoral defeat of 1945 shook the Conservative Party out of its lethargy and impelled it to rethink its philosophy and reform its ranks with a thoroughness unmatched for a century.”322 During the war, the Conservatives were forced to recognise the effect which proposals contained in a number of documents would have on post-war politics: these included the Beveridge Report; the Uthwatt Report on town and country planning; the White Paper on 318

Kopsch, “The Approach of the Conservative Party to Social Policy”, 44, quoted in Addison, The Road to 1945, 232. 319 Harrington and Young, The 1945 Revolution, 124. 320 Hansard, HC Deb, 17 February 1943, 5th ser. vol. 386, col. 1818. 321 Harrington and Young, The 1945 Revolution, 124. 322 Gamble, The Conservative Nation, 33–40; Butler, The Art of the Possible, 126.

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Unemployment; and the provisions of the Education Act of 1944. Nevertheless, the Conservatives did not produce a unified plan to implement these reports, but instead “spoke in a babel of often conflicting voices, ranging from the libertarian stance of Party Chairman, Ralph Assheton, to the interventionist stance adopted by members of the Tory Reform Committee.”323 In the post-war period, and arguably through until the late 1960s, the Conservative Party’s official position on the role of the State was defined by the results of the 1945 general election. The Conservative defeat in July 1945 was in itself a shock, but of more lasting importance was the prevailing Conservative impression of why the Party had lost—its “identification with the desire to return to the unlimited free enterprise, unemployment, slump and so on” of the 1930s.324 So how were these differences within the Party, and the professorial ideological battles between the parties, reflected in their manifestos? In truth, the gap between the parties’ official policies as declared in their manifestos was relatively small. Both promised Food, Work, Homes, and Welfare, including a reformed educational system, a National Health Service, and the implementation of the Beveridge proposals on national insurance. The main difference between them was over nationalisation, which reflected the Conservatives’ belief in the ability of private enterprise to provide full employment after the war, and Labour’s belief in the need to extend state ownership.325 The Conservative manifesto was issued as “Winston Churchill’s Declaration of Policy to the Electors.” In its pages, he confessed that he “had hoped to preserve the Coalition Government…until the end of the Japanese war”, and blamed “the unwillingness of the Socialist and…Liberal Parties” to agree to this for the early election. He also announced that he had formed a “new National Government” which consisted of “many of those who helped me to carry the burdens of State through the darkest days.” Evoking the recent struggle and his role in leading Britain to victory, Churchill was particularly concerned that the “conduct of foreign affairs” not be placed into “untried hands.” The manifesto clearly stated the nature of his appeal, and the tone which the Party would adopt for the coming campaign, including Churchill’s pronouncement that: This is the time for freeing energies, not stifling them. Britain’s greatness has been built on character and daring, not on docility to a State machine. 323

Green, Ideologies of Conservatism, 10–11. Jon Lawrence and Miles Taylor, eds., Party, State and Society; Electoral Behaviour in Britain since 1820 (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1997), 178. 325 Gamble, The Conservative Nation, 39. 324

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At all costs we must preserve that spirit of independence and that “Right to live by no man’s leave underneath the law.”326

After emphasising the need to ensure the viability of the United Nations, the continued preservation of links with the wartime Allies (including Soviet Russia), and the need to lead the “Colonies forward to self-governing institutions”, the Declaration referred to the “Four Years’ Plan” which Churchill had sketched out in a broadcast to the nation in the Spring of 1943. This had now been reshaped as a “general scheme”, covering “five or six large measures of a practical character” which the Party would address after the election. Significantly, the Plan did not mention the Beveridge Report. The six principal measures were listed under the headings of Work, Homes, Food and Agriculture, National Insurance, and Health and Education. The broad similarities between the proposals under these headings, and those made in the same areas in the Labour Party manifesto, “Let’s Face the Future”, have led some historians to argue that the election confirmed the emergence of consensus politics during the war. From this perspective, the lasting importance of 1945 was that it opened up an era of much party co-operation in British politics, centring on agreement on the fundamentals of a welfare state and a mixed economy. The validity of this claim is examined in greater detail in Chapter Six, in the context of how the Conservative Party approached policy-making in Opposition after 1945. The measures proposed under the six headings listed above gave general reassurances about the benefits which would follow the election of a Conservative Government, persistent warnings about the disasters which would flow from the election of a Socialist administration, and the occasional uneasy acknowledgement that some pre-war conditions could not be allowed to return. On Work, for example, the primary aim to be adopted was naturally to ensure “the maintenance of a high and stable level of employment” in order to avoid the “disastrous slumps and booms from which we used to suffer.” This would only be achieved, however, by “mutual co-operation between industry and the State, rather than control by the State.”327 The proposals on Homes were exactly what one would have expected. The provision of homes was to be given the highest possible priority. Targets for building new homes including the provision of “new types of factory-made permanent houses” (prefabs), for repairing war326

“Winston Churchill’s Declaration of Policy to the Electors”, 1945 Conservative Party General Election Manifesto, http://www.conservativemanifesto.com/1945/1945-conservative-manifesto.shtml. 327 “Winston Churchill’s Declaration of Policy to the Electors.”

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damaged homes, for the continuation of existing rent controls, for the control of the costs of scarce building materials and for the acquisition of “blitzed areas on the basis of the 1939 value”, would have occasioned little surprise.328 The same could be said about the proposals on Food and Agriculture, where it was stated that “the best results [would] be obtained by restoring the greatest measure of freedom possible, and allowing full scope for each farmer to make the best use of his land [by the reduction of] war-time directions and controls.”329 The proposals on National Insurance concealed more than they revealed. The manifesto pledged that ‘[o]ne of [the] most important tasks will be to pass into law and bring into action as soon as we can a nationwide and compulsory scheme of National Insurance based on the plan announced by the Government of all Parties in 1944.” Yet this obscured Churchill’s misgivings about some of the recommendations in the Beveridge Report. Though Churchill had authorised the publication of the Report, he must surely have been alarmed by an article in the Daily Telegraph shortly before publication, apparently quoting Beveridge to the effect that his proposals would take the country “half-way to Moscow.”330 More broadly, however, he was concerned that the Beveridge proposals must be related to other post-war demands on national resources in determining priorities, and also that a dangerously optimistic mood was developing in the country about what was going to be possible after the war. People would be antagonised if promises were made which could not be fulfilled. As Churchill told Lord Cherwell, “if the Beveridge report is adopted out of hand we must make it plain that other proposals such as higher wages, housing, agriculture, education etc., will have to be postponed.”331 The call for health reform was, of course, a crucial part of the Beveridge proposals and the Ministry of Health had published a White Paper on the proposed health service in February 1944. There was, however, an increasing controversy about what the White Paper actually meant. This was not, however, made explicit under the Health heading of the Conservative manifesto which promised that “the health service of the country will be made available to all citizens. Everyone will contribute to the cost and no one will be denied the attention, treatment or the appliances he requires because he cannot afford them.”332 328

“Winston Churchill’s Declaration of Policy to the Electors.” “Winston Churchill’s Declaration of Policy to the Electors.” 330 Daily Telegraph, 18 November 1942 331 PREM 4/89/2: Churchill to Cherwell, 11 February 1943. 332 “Winston Churchill’s Declaration of Policy to the Electors.” 329

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On the surface, the manifesto pledge appeared to carry forward the White Paper prescription, but it did not reveal that what the Conservatives were looking for was a natural evolution from the existing system and not, as Labour envisaged, a clean break with the past. An indication of the Conservative position might be read into the proposal that “[t]he voluntary hospitals…will remain free [and will operate] in friendly partnership with local authority hospitals”, which reflected backbench anxiety over the possibility that the voluntary hospitals would gradually be forced into the private sector.333 Nor did the manifesto reveal Conservative concern that a scheme covering the whole population would “so narrow private practice as to virtually destroy it, with an inevitable lowering of standards in the medical profession.” In legislative terms, educational reform had been given precedence over the introduction of a comprehensive scheme of social security, largely because Butler had persuaded the Treasury that it would cost much less. Sir John Andersen, by then Lord President of the Council, had told Butler that he would rather provide money for educational reform than “throw it down the sink with Sir William Beveridge.” Despite a degree of opposition in the House of Commons, the proposals in the Education White Paper published in July 1943 were given statutory effect in the 1944 Education Act. In consequence, the proposals under the heading “Education” in the Conservative manifesto were no more than assurances, dressed in highflown language, that the provisions of the Act would be implemented. The Act dealt with the question of the future of the Anglican and Roman Catholic Voluntary Schools, as well as introducing a requirement for compulsory secondary education for all children. It also raised the school leaving age to fifteen, and addressed the provision of part-time “continuation schools.” The manifesto described the overall aim of the reforms as being “to enable the child to develop his or her responsible place, first in the world of school and then as a citizen.” In a none too subtle jibe at Labour, such educated children would be more than “a standardised or utility child useful only as a cog in a nationalised and bureaucratic machine.”334 These principal themes apart, the manifesto also dealt with such matters as Overseas Trade, Industrial Efficiency, Monopolies, Controls, the Small Man in Business, Transport, and Money. It was notable only for its repeated expressions of traditional Conservative values, and the disparagement of what it saw as a Socialist future. It thus made the following statements:

333 334

“Winston Churchill’s Declaration of Policy to the Electors.” “Winston Churchill’s Declaration of Policy to the Electors.”

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x x x

x x x

We will not allow drastic changes of ownership to be forced upon industries on no evidence except a political theory. Nationalisation involves a State monopoly, with no proper protection for anyone against monopoly power. We intend to guard the people of this country against those who, under guise of war necessity, would like to impose upon Britain for their own purposes a permanent system of bureaucratic control, reeking of totalitarianism. This policy will preserve the incentives of free enterprise and safeguard the industry from the dead hand of State ownership or political interference in day-to-day management. It is discouraging to [a citizen’s] enterprise and his efforts to better himself by doing the bit extra, for so large a part of anything he gains to be removed by the tax-collector. Our programme is not based upon unproved theories or fine phrases, but upon principles that have been tested anew in the fires of war and not found wanting.335

Overall, the Conservative election strategy expressed through the manifesto was essentially based on Churchill’s assessment of the global threats likely to be encountered in the future—and his proven ability to cope with them. The message was reinforced by a picture of the “Man with the Big Cigar” and the slogan “Help him finish the job.”336 The exhortation on the poster to VOTE NATIONAL was countered by a Labour Party poster captioned NATIONAL EYEWASH.337 The Labour Party manifesto, “Let Us Face the Future”, had a strange birth. At the Party conference in December 1944, delegates had expressed unhappiness with the National Executive’s policy document, “Economic Controls, Public Ownership and Full Employment.” Although it had reaffirmed the principle of public ownership, the document had proposed acquiring only the Bank of England. Reflecting the general concern, Ian Mikardo, the then-unknown candidate for Reading, had put down a resolution that called for the manifesto to include transferring land, large-scale building, heavy industry, and all forms of banking, transport, and fuel and power to public ownership. Despite National Executive pressure to withdraw it, the resolution was carried by an overwhelming 335

“Winston Churchill’s Declaration of Policy to the Electors.” Angus Calder, The People’s War (London: Jonathan Cape, 1969) quoted in Dimoldenberg, Cheer Churchill, 61. 337 McCallum and Readman, The British General Election, 82–83. 336

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majority, only for Mikardo to be told by Herbert Morrison that he had probably cost the Party the general election. Ironically, “Let Us Face the Future”, which to a great extent mirrored the Mikardo resolution, was subsequently drafted by a Committee chaired by Morrison.338 Some have suggested that the Labour Party manifesto could equally well have been called “Let Us Not Forget the Past”, since its call for modernisation was based on a lengthy and highly colourful opening of condemnatory material about what took place during the inter-war years. It argued that the people had made “a tremendous effort” to win the First World War but, in taking the “election promises of the anti-Labour parties at their face value” in 1918, had then lost the peace to the “hard-faced men who had done well out of the war” and their political friends who had subsequently shaped a peace that “suited themselves.”339 The “great interwar slumps” which had followed were “the sure and certain result of the concentration of too much economic power in the hands of too few men”, who “had only learned how to act in the interest of their own bureaucraticallyrun private monopolies which may be likened to totalitarian oligarchies within our democratic State.”340 These men had felt no responsibility to the nation. Now Labour had taken their full share of the burdens and responsibilities of a Second World War which had not been won by any one man. Indeed, it had been the initiative of Labour in Parliament which had brought about the fall of the Chamberlain Government and the formation of the War Government. Labour had also insisted on the introduction of various forms of control which had, in effect, taken “the profits out of war.”341 A new Conservative Government would get rid of these controls— for the removal of which Big Business was pleading on every Tory platform and in every Tory newspaper—and create another “profiteers paradise”, giving “the privileged rich an entirely free hand to plunder the rest of the nation as shamelessly as they did in the nineteen-twenties.” The Labour Party was therefore offering the nation a plan which would “win the Peace for the People.”342 What followed was effectively a plea to put “Fairness First” (echoing the Baldwin/Butler idea of “Safety First”), and after its somewhat 338

Harrington and Young, The 1945 Revolution, 133–4. “Let Us Face the Future: A Declaration of Labour Policy for the Consideration of the Nation”, 1945 Labour Party General Election Manifesto, accessed 3 December 2021, http://www.labour-party.org.uk/manifestos/1945/1945-labourmanifesto.shtml. 340 “Let Us Face the Future”. 341 “Let Us Face the Future”. 342 “Let Us Face the Future”. 339

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hysterical opening, the manifesto with one major exception said almost entirely what one might have expected it to say. It called for “post-war Governments” to “put the nation above any sectional interest, above any free enterprise.” A declaration that “The Labour Party stands for freedom”, embraced in particular “the freedom of the Trade Unions”, which had been constrained by the Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act of 1927 passed in the aftermath of the General Strike of 1926. The manifesto also clearly stated its opposition to other alleged “freedoms”: “there are certain so-called freedoms that Labour will not tolerate: freedom to exploit other people; freedom to pay poor wages and to push up prices for selfish profit; freedom to deprive the people of the means of living full, happy, healthy lives.”343 All of these pledges were high-sounding, somewhat ambiguous, and lacking in substance, as was the later pledge to create “the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain—free, democratic, efficient, progressive, [and] public spirited.” The real meat of the manifesto, however, came in the paragraphs following the statement that “there are basic industries ripe and over-ripe for public ownership and management in the direct service of the nation”—a statement that caused great alarm to the Conservative Party. The services specifically listed in the following “industrial programme” were the “fuel and power industries”; “iron and steel”; “gas and electricity undertakings”; and the “coal industry”, which “has been floundering chaotically under the ownership of many hundreds of independent companies.” –The list also included “inland transport”, namely “rail, road, air, and canal.” All these “socialised industries” would be appropriated “on a basis of fair compensation.” An earlier paragraph had promised to nationalise the Bank of England. Existing economic and price controls would be reshaped to avoid “a short boom followed by a collapse, as after the last war; we do not want a wild rise in prices and inflation, followed by a smash and widespread unemployment.”344 The following paragraphs on Agriculture and the People’s Food; Houses and the Building Programme; Education and Recreation; Health of the Nation and its Children; and Social Insurance against the Rainy Day were almost indistinguishable from the Conservative proposals in the same areas, except for the admission, in a short paragraph on The Land, that “Labour believes in land nationalisation” and a warning that, in relation to education and health and social services reforms, if “our opponents were in power then, running true to form, they would be likely to cut these social provisions on the plea that the nation could not meet the cost.” This was the line that the Conservatives had adopted on at least three occasions between 343 344

“Let Us Face the Future”. “Let Us Face the Future”.

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the wars. After the required nod to the need for international co-operation to ensure a World of Progress and Peace, the manifesto ended with a Call to all Progressives to make the wise choice between “the Conservative Party, standing for the protection of the rights of private economic interest, and the Labour Party, allied with the great Trade Union and co-operative movements, standing for the wise organisation and use of the economic assets of the nation for public good.”345 The significance of the manifestos has been interpreted in various ways by different commentators. In broad terms, some have seen them as making clear the ideological differences between the parties, with their presentation to the electorate of a straight choice between “Socialism” and “free enterprise.” Each manifesto, therefore, went out of its way to draw out what were seen to be most objectionable proposals in the other’s document, both in practical and philosophical terms. Yet so unclear were many of the proposals in both documents, principally in relation to how the policies being advanced would be developed and implemented, that it was difficult to be certain how people’s lives would actually be affected. On health, for example, Labour candidates argued that the Party’s manifesto pledged the introduction of a free and comprehensive service as soon as possible, while the Conservative manifesto, by playing up the need for “thriving voluntary hospitals”, and the importance of private practice, seemed to be suggesting that the new health service to which the Party was committing itself would be achieved by a gradual extension of pre-war services. Differences such as these, however, were seen by some not as indicating an irreconcilable ideological gulf between the parties, but as evidence of an emerging consensus around future strategies. Such a consensus reflected, albeit in varying degrees, the apparent agreements reached about the need for post-war reconstruction in the wartime initiatives that had produced the Beveridge Report and the Employment White Paper, and that had already been legislated for in the 1944 Education Act. Evidence for this optimistic view was found in the bipartisanship which had been achieved during the war; the Conservative embrace of the case, in principle at least, for welfare reform; and the evident acceptance by both parties of a post-war mixed economy. In this respect, the views of the members of the Tory Reform Committee were given some credence. As we shall see in a later chapter, the efforts of the defeated Conservatives to come to terms with welfarism caused no small degree of perplexity within the Party. In short, the view of the consensualists was that it was necessary to read between the lines of the manifestos rather than take what was written on them at face value. 345

“Let Us Face the Future”.

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In parallel with the somewhat somnolent battle of the manifestos, there was a livelier pamphlet war. One rather stark example was the “Guilty” controversy, about which Party should be blamed for the lack of preparation for the war. In a pamphlet headed Guilty Men, the Tories quoted instances in which members of the Labour Party, in conference or in Parliament, had voted or protested against rearmament. It also referred to Mr. Attlee’s opposition to the Conscription Bill in April 1939. The Labour Party retaliated in Guilty Party, by quoting Mr. Churchill’s claim in a speech in 1938 that the “Tories had left us in the hour of trial without adequate national defence or effective international security.” Similarly, a Cooperative Party pamphlet, tepidly backed by the Labour Party, and published under the title A Better Britain, asserted that “if the country could afford to spend so much in war, then surely it could spend something comparable in peacetime.” The Conservative rejoinder in Five Facts about Finance was that the State had no money of its own, that high levels of taxation were unacceptable, and that large-scale borrowing would lead rapidly to inflation. This meant that expenditure had to be controlled, and Budgets balanced. There were also further exchanges on, for example, Planning and Housing.346 Though some have expressed doubts whether a national swing of 12 per cent in the election can be accounted for entirely by organisational issues, it has come to be generally accepted that a significant factor affecting the outcome of the election was the lack of attention given by the central Conservative Party to its local party machinery in the country. By the time the election was called, it was almost (if not entirely) non-existent in some constituencies. Ralph Assheton, the Party Chairman from 1944 to 1946, made the point very clearly by acknowledging that the Party had gone to war, and could not be expected to make up in a few months for six years’ worth of neglect of its organisation and propaganda. The Party, convinced of its long-standing organisational superiority, baulked at the idea that Labour had overtaken them in this respect.347 The problem had arisen from the different interpretations placed by the parties on the meaning of “electoral truce.” While the Conservatives considered that the term implied a complete cessation of political activity in the constituencies—even to the point of disbanding the staff of their local organisations—the Labour Party recognised no such restrictions. The only ban which they observed derived from the narrowest possible definition of “electoral truce.”

346

McCallum and Readman, The British General Election, 50–57. Conservative Agents’ Journal, [unnumbered], January 1946, discussed by John Ramsden, The Age of Churchill and Eden 1940–1957 (Longman: London, 1995) 91. 347

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The electoral truce had been agreed by the Chief Whips of the Conservative, Liberal and Labour parties in the House of Commons on 26 September 1939, and was intended to hold good during the war or until ended by one of the parties giving notice. It was not, in fact, terminated until the 1945 general election. The truce purported to set aside peacetime rules governing local politics. In theory at least, local government elections were suspended, as was by-election competition. But the truce was not always followed. After 1942, for example, the new Common Wealth Party, preaching a brand of Christian Socialism, attracted much publicity. Its credo was that, in order to win the war, Britain must adopt socialistic measures, packaged under the headings of “Common Ownership”, “Vital Democracy”, and “Morality in Politics.” In April 1943, the Common Wealth candidate won the Eddisbury seat from a National Liberal opponent. In January 1944, the Party defeated the Conservative candidate in the previously held Conservative seat of Skipton, where its candidate was supported by both full-time workers and young volunteers. The local Labour party, unwilling to support an elderly Conservative nominee, also flouted the electoral truce by throwing its weight behind the Common Wealth candidate, who was a charismatic young army officer. His narrow victory alarmed Conservative Central Office, who complained to Churchill that the Party was now the only one abiding by the terms of the truce. Churchill’s response was to agree to allow Cabinet Ministers to participate in by-elections. Altogether, 140 Parliamentary seats became vacant during the period covered by the truce and of these, nearly half were filled by a nominee of the incumbent party without competition, whilst 75 contests were forced by independent candidates or minor party nominees putting themselves forward. This situation stimulated what became known as “the movement away from party”, a theme which became a commonplace of discussion during the earlier, darker periods of the war. It questioned whether those MPs elected in 1935, and whose membership had an average age of around sixty, were going to be fit to appreciate and fulfil the expectations of the post-war electorate. By the end of 1942, however, the more optimistic forecasts about the outcome of the war had taken much of the sting out of the movement. Its sponsors and principal supporters had come to recognise that its power to undermine the hold of the established parties was not only limited, but had lost public resonance.348

348

Steven Fielding, “The Second World War and Popular Radicalism: The Significance of the Movement Away From Party”, History, Vol. 80, No. 25 (February 1995), pp. 38–58.

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Throughout the war, the Labour Party continued to hold annual conferences with the usual local constituency association representation. The Conservative Party held no Party conference until 1943, though it did hold regular meetings of the Central Council of the National Union. Their stricter interpretation of the general curtailment of political activity, even if it affected all parties to some extent or other, created difficulties for the Conservative Party and allowed the Labour Party to seize the organisational advantage in local politics. Anxiety had surfaced at various gatherings of the Conservative Party from 1941 onwards about the need “to retain the interest and support of the rank-and-file members through periodic meetings and social events”, and Churchill had asked constituency associations to recognise that ‘[i]t is not too much to say…that in the national interest and not merely for party ends, it is vitally important that, side by side with our war effort, ways and means should be found of keeping the Conservative Party organisation in being and ready to be tuned up when the time comes.” Nevertheless, as W.W. Astor put it, albeit in somewhat extreme terms, “The Conservatives [had] concentrated too fully on winning the war while the Socialists [had]not scruple[d] to attack and denigrate their too loyal partners in the National Government.”349 For his part, Churchill put the case more moderately in his memoirs: No Prime Minister could ever have wished for more loyal and steadfast colleagues than I had found in the Labour Party. Nevertheless, as the total defeat of Germany drew ever nearer, their party machine began to work, as was certainly its right, with far-reaching and ever-increasing activity. As the war deepened and darkened practically all the agents of the Conservative Party had found war work. Many were young enough to join the forces. The core of the Labour, or as we call them in our controversial moods, the Socialist Party, was at that time the trade unions. Many of the trade union leaders wanted of course to go to the front, but the whole process of organising our production…forbade their release. They all did work on the home front… [but] at the same time they maintained their party affiliations; and once our mortal danger had passed these increasingly took on a partisan character.350

Conversely, the wartime emergency—particularly in its early stages—had, up to a point, fostered a new sense of local co-operation across Party lines. Individual politicians were dedicated to doing whatever might help—in relation to such matters as the organisation of civil defence, for 349 350

Astor, “The Conservative Party in Opposition”, 344. Churchill, Second World War, Vol. VI, 508–09.

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example—to frustrate the external enemy. Yet such co-operation did not always result in the disappearance of political tensions, and Conservatives frequently complained after the election that, in contrast to their own restraint, Labour activists had missed no opportunity to break the truce by proselytising on behalf of their Party. For their part, Labour supporters did not accept that highlighting social problems which would require attention after the war constituted direct party controversy. The failure of local Conservatives to find effective ways of counteracting these “socialist tactics” was largely due to the concerns of Central Office to avoid jeopardising Coalition stability.351 To say that the Conservative campaign went badly would be an understatement. In particular, the Party had handicapped itself by its selection of indifferent candidates. Before the war, the tendency had been either to “select the candidate who had offered to make the largest subscription to local party funds” or to choose a “safe, local man”, such as the local party chairman with many years of service. Outside candidates were often regarded as “rebels” who would alienate the local membership, who were simply concerned with the need for a return to pre-war “normality”, by bringing in new, forward-looking ideas. These difficulties were compounded by the difficulty of finding candidates with good war records to stand in the Conservative interest. Even where such a candidate was found, there was a fear that “the wearing of [military] uniform would be regarded as an upper-class device designed to stem a drift of public opinion to the left.”352 Labour objected so strongly to the wearing of uniform during electioneering that the interim National Government withdrew its approval of the practice, though it was agreed that soldiers in uniform might ask questions at election meetings. The Conservative campaign was also not assisted by those within the top echelon of the Party, prompted, in large part, by the influence which Lord Beaverbrook was attempting to exercise over the tone of the campaign. As we have seen, he was widely believed to have been responsible for the polemical nature of Churchill’s first election broadcast and, according to A.J.P. Taylor, in the spring of 1945, Beaverbrook had pushed aside Party chairman Ralph Assheton for being “inadequately aggressive.” The effect was to make Beaverbrook himself the Party manager. His influence in the Party, which Churchill appears to have done nothing to counteract, made him extremely unpopular with many; one defeated Conservative M.P. later

351

Kevin Jefferys, The Churchill Coalition and Wartime Politics, 1940–1945 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991), 138–42. 352 Addison, The Road to 1945, 257–58.

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expressed the opinion that “I believe there is no man living, more detested throughout the political world than Lord Beaverbrook.”353 During the campaign, Labour accused Beaverbrook and Brendan Bracken of having forced an unwanted election on the country, to which Beaverbrook responded in the Daily Express by claiming that “Labour had run away from its duty to see through the war in the Far East.”354 It does seem to have been the case that in May 1945, Beaverbrook and Bracken were urging Churchill to hold a snap election “because by autumn unemployment will increase due to slackened war production and housing problems will be worse than ever, so they are moving quickly to cash in on Churchill’s war prestige.”355 The truth is that Beaverbrook and Bracken (who was to lose his seat in North Paddington) did much to shape the outcome of the election with their truculence and outspokenness. Beaverbrook certainly did not endear himself to the electorate by stating at a meeting of the North Paddington Conservative Association that it was no use supposing that after ten years of political truce the electorate was informed on political issues. There had, of course, been only five years of truce. The election campaign began in earnest at the national level during the specially arranged eleven-day session of the House of Commons, held after royal permission to dissolve Parliament had been granted. This gave the Labour ex-Ministers, who included Clement Attlee, Ernest Bevin, Hugh Dalton and Herbert Morrison, the opportunity to attack publicly the policies of their late colleagues—now members of the Caretaker Government—from the Opposition benches. This they did with somewhat unexpected vigour and combativeness. They were well prepared to do so, as a result of the prolonged debate on the provisions of “Let Us Face the Future” which had taken place at their Blackpool Labour Party conference at the end of May 1945. Indeed, Attlee’s decision to reject Churchill’s preference for a delay in holding an election until the end of the war in the Far East, and his alternative offer of a July date which Churchill accepted, were the result of a vote at that conference. The deliberations there allowed the Labour Party to go forward with a fully developed programme supported by a committed and unified leadership team, which had gone to some lengths at the conference to imbue a sense of reality and restraint on the delegates who would be campaigning on the manifesto around the country. A key decision was taken at the conference: in no circumstances, whatever the outcome of the election, would the Party participate in a Coalition with

353

Quoted in Addison, The Road to 1945, 261. Daily Express, 8 June 1945. 355 Harrington and Young, The 1945 Revolution, 148. 354

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the Conservative Party. Prospective Conservative candidates had had no similar opportunity to debate the Party’s “Declaration of Policy” as it did not appear until 11 June. After that date, the candidates were summoned to London for hurriedly organised briefings on its provisions. As we have seen, there was no common ground between different factions in the Party on many of those points. The campaign in the constituencies was launched by the delegates who had attended the Labour conference while the interim Parliament was still sitting. The effective start of Conservative campaigning was delayed in most constituencies until circulation of Churchill’s “Declaration of Policy”. This gave Labour a head-start in many constituencies. Labour’s advantage was enhanced by delays in appointing Conservative candidates in some constituencies, and by the speedy implementation of Labour’s programme of visits by Labour leaders to marginal constituencies, particularly in Lancashire, Yorkshire, and the industrial Midlands. Churchill aside, most speeches by the leading Conservatives were in their own constituencies, though Beaverbrook, as a member of the House of Lords and with no constituency to defend, spoke in a number. For the most part, electioneering followed the usual pattern of house-to-house canvassing and public meetings in schools, halls, or in the open air, leading to what has been described as a generally subdued campaign. One change from the pattern of pre-war electioneering, however, was the greater use made of broadcasting. With the exception of Sundays, speeches were a nightly feature throughout the campaign, with the two main parties each giving ten speeches. Labour used ten different speakers, while in line with the overall approach of the Conservative campaign, Churchill spoke four times. As noted earlier, Churchill’s first broadcast had a chilling effect on the election. The high figures for listeners to these broadcasts help to account for the general lack of interest in local campaigning. The general tone of the campaign tended to obscure what was actually at stake in the election. The parties had worked in partnership and had also jointly developed prospective post-war themes for five years, and this made it difficult for many to identify the differences between their proposed future programmes. This predicament was not helped by the fact that the Conservatives, determined to exploit Churchill’s international stature, tended to emphasise the future importance of foreign affairs. In contrast, the Labour Party concentrated on policies that would produce the deserved rewards for those whose efforts had brought about victory both in the field and at home. Differences in domestic policies were, however, more discernible in some areas than in others, and were probably most acute in the area of

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economic and industrial policy. For Labour, it was a question of “Public versus Private Enterprise”, with the emphasis on a combination of “physical socialist planning” and “Keynesian-style demand management.” There was also a focus on the nationalisation of a wide range of key industries, all of which would involve a commitment to a large-scale growth in public expenditure. For the Conservatives, private enterprise would continue to be the “life-blood” of the industrial system and “sound finance was critical.” Nationalisation was anathema, and public spending needed to be controlled. How policies in the health and social security fields would actually be implemented was never made entirely clear, though Labour pronouncements in these areas had a generally sharper thrust than had those of their opponents. Churchill’s ambivalence on Beveridge has already been explored in detail in Chapter Four, and emerging differences in relation to the creation of a National Health Service commented on. The progressive views of the Tory Reformers were, by and large, obscured by the ongoing inter-party debate. This state of confusion about what separated the parties is almost certainly what led to the uncertainties expressed by close observers, political commentators, and even politicians themselves about the likely outcome of the election. Most Conservatives, including Central Office, were still confident of victory, and Labour leaders were reticent about predicting Churchill’s demise. Opinion polls were not regarded as reliable indicators, and the most recent by-election results were difficult to interpret. No wonder then that it was not just the fact of Labour’s victory, but its eventual scale, which came as a complete surprise. Such a victory had been unimaginable at the outbreak of war, but its performance in the Coalition Government had seemingly made Labour not only “the patriotic party”, but also the Party most likely to deliver on wartime promises. The foregoing paragraphs have identified many of the reasons advanced over the years to explain the Conservative defeat in 1945. Among the most prominent were the organisational unpreparedness of the Party to conduct an effective campaign, together with the tone set by Churchill which deflected public attention from the more progressive views being preached by the Tory Reformers who were anxious to repudiate much of inter-war Conservatism, and identify the Party whole-heartedly with wartime reforms. The result was to create the impression that the Party was focussed on pre-war type business as usual. Churchill had simply not given a strong enough lead on domestic policy. Butler, who had invested great effort in trying to get his colleagues to “recognise the domestic consequences of the war”, later reflected that the Party would almost certainly have fared much better if a concentration on post-war policies had

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not come a “poor third” behind “the exploitation of Churchill’s record as a war leader and vitriolic attacks on the opposition.” The fact was that much of the idealism contained in the exercises conducted by the wartime Coalition, such as the Beveridge Report which had generated high-levels of anticipation about the world to come once victory had been achieved, had been undermined by the predilection for retreating from them which Churchill had demonstrated during the short life of the Caretaker Government. Such a stance had served to distance him from the ideological concerns of Attlee and his colleagues. The conclusion reached by the electorate from what can best be described as this posturing was that the parties were, in many ways, as far apart as they had been before the war. This perspective of the voting public derived from the way the parties conducted themselves once the decision had been taken to hold the election, and then from the rushed manner in which it was called. Later opinion, however, is unanimous that these were not the real determinants of the result, and that there was an inevitability about it which would not have been deflected by different styles of campaigning or more efficient organisation by the Conservatives, although as Anthony Eden was later to observe, “a clearer and more positive programme might at least have reduced the Labour majority.” Today, most expert opinion is that by the time of the election, the swing to the left was unstoppable. The only cause for continuing surprise is that the Tories did not realise the trouble they were in, and certainly not its magnitude. Evidence shows that the animosities of the late 1930s continued into the late 1940s, and that party politics did not come to an end with the fall of Neville Chamberlain. Quite the contrary. Wartime “national unity”, by requiring the involvement of the Labour Party and the TUC, had acted to increase the authority and visibility of both, which backbench Conservatives in the House of Commons resented as much as they did Churchill’s indifference to the growing influence of these bodies. Many backbenchers believed that much of the reconstruction programme was the work of the Left and the Planners, and hoped that it could be whittled down when the Conservatives escaped from the Coalition. Furthermore, while Labour Party leaders benefitted greatly from their role as partners in the visionary work being done by the Coalition to build a better Britain after the war, the left wing of their Party had no scruples about behaving as an Opposition and agitating against the “wicked” Tories of pre-war memory. It was also the case that as the prospects of ultimate victory improved, the underlying fear that adversarial tensions in the Coalition would disrupt the war effort dissipated. It seems fair, therefore, to say that the 1945 election result was, to a great degree, predetermined by what had

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happened before the war, and by attitudes which co-operation during the war had obscured but not overridden. According to Paul Addison, the “postwar plans of the Coalition were never more than a short-term compromise in which a bargain was struck between the minimum Labour was prepared to accept and the Conservatives were prepared to concede.”356 The compromise was not strong enough to survive the resumption of campaign politics, and the intractable differences between the parties highlighted by the campaign. The roots of these differences, and the extent to which the reconstruction work of the Coalition Government had failed to eliminate them, are analysed in the next chapter.

356

Addison, The Road to 1945, 286.

CHAPTER SIX 1945–1951: COMPROMISE TO CONSENSUS?

This chapter brings me to a consideration of the first of the two core issues tackled by this book—how to account for the fact that, by the time of the 1951 general election, broad political agreement existed between the two major parties about the essential constituent elements of welfarism. Was it that a consensus, of whatever sort, had existed at the end of the period of Coalition Government and simply been carried forward? Or, conversely, had the Conservative Party made compromises—perhaps in recognition of the strength of public opinion—to bring its policies on social welfare into line with the systems developed by the Attlee Governments? Many eminent historians have considered this question since 1951, and their differing views are outlined later in this chapter. The second core issue, my conclusion on which was foreshadowed in the Introduction—which party can claim most credit for the creation of the Welfare State—is addressed in detail in the following chapters. Of the many historians who have sought to tackle the question of what we mean by a welfare state, José Harris, in my view, dealt with it most succinctly in her 1990 essay “Enterprise and Welfare States: A Comparative Perspective.” Discussing the importance of definitions, Harris asks whether the welfare state can be characterised as “a Beveridge-based system of contractual social insurance” or “do we mean the modern residue of a much older system rooted in economic status and citizen rights? Or do we mean the whole complex of social and educational policies and institutions which in modern societies bear upon individual and collective socio-economic needs? Do we perhaps mean something peculiar to Britain or do we see some form of welfare state system as well-nigh universal throughout the developed world?”. Harris points out that the term “welfare state” was not invented in Britain; rather, it was devised “by the old Prussian right in the dying embers of Weimar Germany.”357 357

José Harris, “Enterprise and Welfare States: A Comparative Perspective”, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 40 (1990),193.

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At the start of the same essay, Harris wrote: for several hundred years, models of civic morality which emphasise independence and self-sufficiency have jostled with alternative models which emphasise paternalism, altruism and organic solidarity. Few phases of social policy in Britain…have not contained elements of more than one approach. Even the New Poor Law, notorious for its subordination to market pressures...often lapsed into practices that were suspiciously communitarian; while Edwardian New Liberalism, famous for its philosophy of organic solidarism, in practice tempered social justice with the quest for “national efficiency.” These varying emphases have all been reflected in the fashions and phases of welfare state historiography—fashions and phases that appear to have been at least partly determined by the vagaries of the prevailing political climate. Thus, in the aftermath of the Second World War historians tended to portray the history of social policy as a series of governmental battles against private vested interests—battles in which the mantle of civic virtue was worn by an altruistic administrative elite, while civic vice was embodied in the motley crew...of [those] who viewed social welfare as a commodity in the market. A slightly later generation of historians, heavily influenced by nineteen sixties-style Marxism and French structuralism, then shifted towards a different stance—emphasising not the conflict but the symbiosis between welfare and private enterprise. Social policy appeared increasingly not as the brake but as the tool of industrial capitalism.358

One of my chief concerns throughout this study has been to test the validity of this analysis—first, through scrutinising the relationship between the Churchill Coalition Government’s consideration of looming post-war “problems of reconstruction” and the emergence of a so-called Welfare State, and, second, by exploring the part played by the Conservative Party, both before and during the war, in assisting or hindering that process. Were the Conservatives determined to achieve broad, cross-party agreement during the Coalition years? Did the Conservatives have to fashion an internal consensus as a precondition for reaching such an agreement? As my starting point, I want to summarise the claims made by historians and commentators over subsequent years—reflecting what José Harris calls “the fashions and phases of welfare state historiography.”359 These claims include the assertion that the legislation from which these welfare systems emerged mirrored, perhaps unconsciously and without an explicit understanding of what was happening, a consensual approach between the parties; and that this legislation was, in effect, an acceptable carry-over of the “agreements” reached, essentially on the Beveridge 358 359

Harris, “Enterprise and Welfare States”, 175–76. Harris, “Enterprise and Welfare States”, 175–76.

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proposals, during the period of Coalition Government. In other words, there was a sufficient majority of both Labour and Conservative politicians who viewed the wartime attention paid to future social reform as the necessary preparation for what many characterise as a post-war “social revolution.” But for every claim that there was consensus, there is a counter-claim that there was no such thing. I shall also consider the basis for the alternatives which these counter-claimants have advanced. As Chapter Four demonstrated, the Coalition years were characterised by tensions between and within the two main parties over the substance and possible long-term effects of Beveridge. As Ben Pimlott put it in his biography of Hugh Dalton, with regard to the situation within the Labour Party: The Report brought into the open a conflict within the Labour Party which had hitherto been suppressed: between those who wished to make the adoption of radical policies the price for staying in the Government and those who wanted to get as much as they could out of the Coalition, even at the price of sacrificing a certain amount of radicalism. But there were other reasons too why a Labour politician might criticise the Report; its assumptions, as some saw them, were liberal, not socialist, and the unions [with Ernest Bevin in the forefront] were particularly critical of the recommendations on children’s allowances and workmen’s compensation. There was also a fear that going all-out in support of Beveridge might split the Coalition and precipitate a general election, bringing a massive defeat for Labour.360

J.M. Lee characterised this situation by noting that “[p]aradoxically, it was important for Labour to be in government, but not to show its policy inclinations too overtly.”361 Tensions on the Conservative side were of a somewhat different nature. Conservative Ministers were not as pressed on the questions of social reform as were their Labour Party colleagues. There was, however, some alarm that Labour Minsters occupying key posts in Government might be allowed to exercise undue influence in the area of forward planning. For example, Hugh Dalton’s appointment to the Board of Trade in February 1942 caused particular anxiety. The office held responsibility for the formulation of future industrial policy, and Dalton’s arrival portended, for some, possible moves toward nationalisation. In this respect, many Conservatives vocally supported the views championed in Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom that associated economic planning with a special type of 360 361

Ben Pimlott, Hugh Dalton (London: Jonathan Cape, 1985), 394. John M. Lee, The Churchill Coalition 1940–1945 (London: Batsford, 1980), 125.

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bureaucratic tyranny. Both before and after publication of the book in 1944, however, various groups were formed to promote “free enterprise.” Continuing anxiety on this question was stimulated by the tone of Churchill’s March 1943 broadcast, in which he promoted his four-year reconstruction plan—a plan that many regarded as a sell-out to Labour. At the same time, the Tory Reform Committee, set up in March 1943, understood that its responsibility lay with making the case for the introduction of forward-looking measures of social reform, broadly along Beveridgean lines. In this respect, the members of the Tory Reform Committee were probably more influential than the Conservative Committee on Post-War Planning. This was under the chairmanship of R.A. Butler, who personally shared the progressive views of the Tory reformers but who was unable, initially at least, to persuade others to embrace his views. Overall, it is probably fair to say that Labour demonstrated a greater measure of unanimity in terms of a cohesive approach to social policy than did their counterparts. The wartime years were characterised by a range of compromises— an understandable result of negotiations between the different parties over social reform. In the early years of the war (and even in the immediate aftermath of Beveridge) there was a fear that the Coalition could be fatally undermined. An end to the war was impossibly far off, and the prospect of a general election was, in consequence, equally remote. This state of affairs left both main parties with little else to do but lay down markers for the future. As the end of the war hove into sight, however, and the prospect of a general election loomed—despite Churchill’s intention to maintain the Coalition during the immediate post-war period—one might have expected that the positions that had materialised post-Beveridge would cause the inter-party differences on future social reform to widen. As the parties were invited in the course of 1944 to debate a series of measures representing the various viewpoints that had emerged post-Beveridge, greater opportunities to gain a political advantage emerged. Yet did this actually happen? Was it inevitable that wartime compromise would necessarily become post-war conflict? Or, conversely, was there a possibility that, compromise might actually be translated into consensus about social reform—a consequence of the wartime experience of the important link between compromise and political stability, and between compromise and the successful pursuit of a common purpose? The benefit of hindsight has not produced a conclusive answer to these questions. Was the Conservative reaction to the policies of the Attlee Labour Government (1945–51) a reflection of consensus between the different groups? Was it a sort of victory within the Party for Tory Progressives?

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Or was the opposition mounted in Parliament during the passage of legislation on social insurance matters, and on the introduction of the National Health Service, a reflection of traditional anti-collective, antiuniversalist—indeed, anti-socialist views—within the Party? Before proceeding to a detailed examination of these problems, it is useful to summarise the views expressed by historians over the years on the vexed question of whether there was a measure of consensus around the emergence of a welfare state, or whether it was imposed by a strong socialist government on an unconvinced and unwilling, weak Conservative Opposition. Obviously, there was no whiff of consensus on such matters as the Government’s nationalisation programme, but in relation to the development of social policies, historians have struggled to agree on a definition of “consensus”, as it might be applied to the post-war Labour Government’s initiatives, and the Conservative Party’s response to them. To the man in the street, consensus probably means something short of unanimous, unquestioning agreement. It was certainly the received wisdom in the second half of the 1970s that the period after 1945 demonstrated a broad integration of opinions on social reform and that, with Labour in office, it was the Conservatives who shifted their ground to accommodate their political opponents. From this perspective, the Conservatives became, in effect, partners in some major areas of what was called the “Attlee consensus.”362 Paul Addison, a prominent advocate of this view, has defined it as, at one level, a reflection of the “professional” and “civilised” interests and instincts of politicians of all parties within the modern party system, focused towards achieving the peaceful resolution of problems through their own mediation, and following agreed rules. At “a higher level”, Addison continues, it can be defined as substantial agreement about the way government should be managed between the two front benches in the House of Commons, together with the support of the rankand-file of their membership. “Consensus”, Addison claims, “presupposes [an]…equal meeting of minds and a…genuine fusion of purpose.”363 One might be forgiven for regarding Addison’s stance as positively Hegelian, demonstrating what Hegel calls “dialectical change”, the outcome of the collision of two opposites, pithily captured by the phrase “thesis versus antithesis equals synthesis.”364 It was this supposed melding of party positions

362

Addison, The Road to 1945, 270–78. Addison, The Road to 1945, 164–65. 364 Norman Lebrecht, Genius & Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847–1947 (London: Oneworld, 2019), 27. 363

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on how the economy should be managed which later came to be known, in a term coined by the Economist, as “Butskellism.”365 Recently, however, a revisionist position has been developed which claims that the idea of a post-war Labour-driven consensus is a myth. According to this viewpoint, the immediate post-war period was one of fundamentally conflicting approaches and intense disagreements. What really took place between 1945 and 1951 was the Conservative Party’s adoption of something regarded as a new “humanised” capitalism, responsive more to international circumstances than purely domestic affairs. At its core was the rejection of the State as a tool to redistribute wealth, or to maintain egalitarian trends introduced during the war years.366 According to this revisionist position, the Conservative “buy-in” to Labour’s social programme occurred only after 1951, when shifting opinion in the Conservative Party led to the formal adoption by the Conservatives of Labour’s social progressivism. Writing in 1996, two decades after the publication of Addison’s seminal work, and with the benefit of hindsight, Nick Ellison drew a distinction between “procedural” and “substantive” consensus. The former, he claimed, conveyed little more than broad agreement amongst political elites about the basic direction of policy-making, while the latter embraced a deeper ideological identification of purpose about the aims and objectives of specific policies. He speculated that in the writings on the postwar period, the level of consensus may have been overstated as an unconscious reaction of those who were anxious (from whatever standpoint) to distinguish the turbulence of the Thatcher years from the placidity of an earlier period of Conservatism. That apart, he suggested that it was too simplistic to cast consensus in terms of what Labour did—and of Conservative accommodations to it.367 Dennis Kavanagh and Peter Morris provided a more flexible definition in 1989. They proposed that it was more appropriate to think of consensus as “a set of parameters which bounded the set of policy options regarded by politicians and civil servants as administratively practical, economically affordable, and politically acceptable.” This seems to me, however, to define not consensus itself, but rather a method of establishing how much consensus exists at any particular time. It assumes the permanent

365

The Economist, 13 February 1954. Harriet Jones and Michael Kandiah, eds., The Myth of Consensus: New Views on British History, 1945–64 (London: Palgrave, 1996). 367 Nick Ellison, “Consensus Here, Consensus There…but not Consensus Everywhere: The Labour Party, Equality and Social Policy in the 1950s”, in The Myth of Consensus, eds. Jones and Kandiah, 17–19. 366

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existence of a degree of common ground between the parties, and sees the problem as simply the determination of the extent of the overlap.368 Writing in 1992, Stephen Brooke approached the question from a distinctively different angle, arguing that it was the “shifting balance of Labour’s own tradition of policy and strategy” which determined that the post-1947 era did not follow a linear process, but instead pursued a “series of erratic blips, occasions when the paths of [the] competing political parties crossed, rather than a constant narrowing of party lines.” Even when reconstruction planning started to be taken seriously in 1943, he suggested, consensus was fragile at best, with clear differences of opinion and perception between the Coalition partners over how such general objectives as full employment and social security might be achieved. “To conclude an end of ideology on such a basis” would, in his view, be “illusory.”369 Brooke’s approach was little different from that taken in 1991 by Kevin Jefferys, who argued that it was the loss of cohesion and radical sense of direction by the Labour Cabinet after 1947 which led to a retreat to internal consensus, and to the adoption of consolidation as a guiding theme. Given that the Conservative Party was not disposed to rock the electoral boat, this effectively left both front benches short of radical options, a situation which invited the attachment of “consensus” as an appropriate label for British politics in the 1950s.370 Alongside these differing views of the meaning of “consensus”, as it has been applied to the post-1945 period of Labour Government, it is important to note the views which have emerged since the mid-1970s about when, and how, the political stance adopted by the Conservative Party on its resumption of office in 1951 was shaped. The Addison view, which held the ring for so long, was that it was the wartime Coalition that laid the foundations for the establishment, after 1945, of both a peacetime managed economy and the expanded welfare state envisaged by Beveridge. The wartime Coalition was hence responsible for the convergence of the two main parties—a convergence, in essence, that gave post-war shape to a wargenerated elite consensus. G.R. Searle offered a somewhat different opinion in his 1995 book, Country Before Party: Coalition and the idea of National Government in Modern Britain, 1885–1987. The hypothesis inherent in the book’s title is expressed in striking and convincing terms: 368 Dennis Kavanagh and Peter Morris, Consensus Politics: From Attlee to Major (Oxford: Blackwell, 2nd edition, 1994), 13. 369 Stephen Brooke, Labour’s War: The Labour Party during the Second World War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 342–43. 370 Jefferys, The Churchill Coalition and Wartime Politics, 1940–1945, 213–16.

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Chapter Six The 1945 General Election marked a watershed in British politics, ushering in, as it did, a new stable two-party system that was to last for over a quarter of a century, characterised by a Labour-Conservative duopoly. The duopoly largely came about as a result of Labour’s emergence during the Second World War as a credible rival to the Conservative Party.371

Citing the changes to the electoral system in the late 1940s—the abolition of the six University constituencies and the two-member boroughs, and the effect of this on reducing the chances of small parties securing parliamentary representation—Searle supported his theory by presenting statistics of the share of votes cast in elections from 1945 onwards. In the first post-war election, Labour and the Conservatives (including the National Liberals) secured 87.6 per cent of the total vote. Following the Liberal collapse of 1951, this proportion rose to an astonishing 96.8 per cent. Although it strays beyond the narrow remit of this study, it is worth noting Searle’s data showing that “as late as 1966, the two main parties still obtained nearly 90 per cent of all votes cast, [and even more tellingly perhaps] that between 1950 and 1970 there were never more than fourteen MPs from the minor parties—and in 1959 a mere six.”372 To this can be added the fact that throughout this period, Searle noted, “there was an approximate balance between the two main parties at Westminster.”373 It does not take too much imagination to be convinced that this matching of votes cast for the two main parties betokened a centrist or consensual approach to policy-making. Whether this is borne out by facts surrounding policy-making in the welfare field is examined in the rest of this chapter. It can be noted, en passant, that in 1987 John Ramsden argued that the roots of the post-1945 Conservative “transformation” were not established during the war, as Searle was later to claim, but rather during the inter-war years. Ramsden was not contesting the post-war consensus theory as such, though he saw it as the result of a lack of choice, rather than a positive choice. He was, instead, simply according to it a much longer gestation period than Addison had done.374 I shall now draw on a wide range of contemporary sources, to evaluate the merits of the disparate views outlined above. The aim is to determine whether—and if so, to what extent—any degree of general

371

Searle, Country Before Party, 220. Searle, Country Before Party, 221. 373 Searle, Country Before Party, 221. 374 John Ramsden, “A Party for Owners or a Party for Earners? How Far Did the British Conservative Party Really Change after 1945?” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 37 (1987): 49–63. 372

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consensus existed between the parties between 1945 and 1951, and, in particular, whether general consensus can be detected in relation to the measures of social reform introduced by the Attlee administration. In other words, can the claim be made, with any conviction, that the Conservative Party made a significant contribution to the creation of the Welfare State? Or to pose the problem in a more forthright manner, was the relationship between the parties marked by a conflict or struggle, performed for the sake of political appearances and Party respectability—and always with the next election, however distant, in mind? Without wishing to pre-empt possible answers to any of these questions, I cannot resist recording the sobering views of Lord Woolton, expressed at various points between 1946 and 1951 on the state of the Conservative Party during the period in question. What seems to me to give his views a degree of relevance in the context of this study, is the fact that when he was offered the post of Party Chairman by Winston Churchill in the summer of 1946, he was not a member of the Party and might, one assumes, have considered the offer with an impartial, and perhaps somewhat jaundiced, eye. The following represents a compendium of his views: The organisation of the Conservative Party was the most topsy-like arrangement that I had ever come across. It had grown up amidst conflicting and—it seemed—almost irreconcilable claims…Large numbers of Conservatives were striving to find a new name for the party because “conserving” seemed to be out of joint with this new world that was demanding adventure and expansion and a rejection of the economic restraints of pre-war life under a Conservative administration. The word “Conservative” was certainly not a political asset when compared with the Socialist word “Labour”…The man who first called the Socialist party the Labour party was a political genius, for indeed the word “labour” implied a party that would look after the best interests of labour…We had our backs to the wall; we had been heavily defeated; we had very little money; the Party was depressed.”375

This was certainly a gloomy assessment; yet at the same time, it was also a recognition of sorts that there were those in the Party who sought change. How far they were able to achieve this goal will be analysed in the later chapters. Before going on to examine the parliamentary manoeuvrings during the post-1945 years, and particularly during the passage of the various measures of social reform, however, it should not be forgotten that 375

Lord Woolton, The Memoirs of the Rt. Hon. the Earl of Woolton (Cassell, London,1959) 331–34.

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two important pieces of Beveridge-related parliamentary business had been transacted before the 1945 election. It thus seems worth considering what indications the attitudes taken on these issues might have given about the future intentions of the parties, as the prospect of an election began to occupy their thoughts and shape their actions. The Family Allowances Act received its final parliamentary approval in June 1945, during the period of the Caretaker Government; it had been introduced by the Coalition Government, with Clement Attlee as one of its sponsors, three months earlier. The Government, as we have seen, had always been more inclined to adopt a broader, more simplified scheme of family allowances than the one proposed by Beveridge, and this was reflected in the White Paper on Social Insurance published in September 1944, and which provided the template for the subsequent legislation. Despite these modifications of Beveridge’s scheme, however, Labour offered only token opposition. There had, in fact, been an earlier White Paper in May 1942—that is, before the completion of the Beveridge Report. It set out the costings of various levels of child allowance, but it had been shelved so as not to pre-empt whatever Beveridge might have to say on the subject. Child allowances had, of course, been paid since they were introduced in Lloyd George’s People’s Budget of 1909. There, they took the form of an income tax allowance of £10 per child for taxpayers earning less than £500 per annum. Eleanor Rathbone was the chief advocate of an allowance in the form adopted in 1945. Rathbone had campaigned for a new scheme since 1918, and had highlighted her case in her 1924 book, The Disinherited Family. Rathbone insisted that an allowance be paid to mothers, rather than to fathers. When legislation was finally forthcoming in 1945, however, it still envisaged that the allowance would be paid to fathers. This situation produced what has been described as a “cross-party rebellion”, led by the likes of Nancy Astor, Edith Summerskill, and Rathbone herself. It proved necessary to amend the Bill after a free vote had demonstrated the strength of feeling on the matter. Interestingly, Beveridge, by this time an MP himself, spoke in the Second Reading debate in the House of Commons in somewhat acerbic terms: In coming to their regrettable decision to make payment to the father, I think the Government made a mistake in chronology. They did not realise this was 1945; they thought we were back in the year 1879—the year in which I was born—and in which, before the Married Women’s Property Act, all money belonged to the husband.376

376

Hansard, HC Deb, 8 March 1945, 5th ser. vol. 408, col. 2306.

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If this successful advance of the Family Allowances legislation— which would not face major opposition, once the payee question was resolved—might be seen as reflecting a degree of unanimity on the need to press ahead with widescale Beveridge-style social reform, could the same be said of the reaction to the White Paper on Employment Policy published and debated in 1944, and of the other Social Insurance White Paper proposals brought forward in the same year? If it could, it would lend weight to those who have claimed that the 1945–51 period witnessed a broad Conservative acceptance of Labour’s intentions towards social reform. Opening the debate on the Employment White Paper for the Coalition in the House of Commons on 21 June 1944, Ernest Bevin, the archetypal trade unionist, spoke with feeling and a strong historical sense about unemployment as a “social disease which must be eradicated from our social life.” Up until then, he argued, the role of the state “has been to deal with the after-effects of the disease, and not to take active measures itself to promote and maintain economic health.”377 The White Paper, he acknowledged, did not raise the question of what would be privately or publicly owned in future, and he accepted that there were those who would think that “we who represent the Labour Party in the Coalition Government… and who have made our contribution to this White Paper…have abandoned our principle concerning what we think the right ownership for industry ought to be.”378 “Yet what the Government has tried to do”, Bevin said, “is to devise a plan which, however you may decide the ownership of industry by adjustments which may have to be made, seeks to attain its objective.”379 It would do this by harnessing “our monetary system, our commercial agreements [and] our industrial practices.”380 As we have seen, the draft of the White Paper mirrored a compromise between the Keynesians in the Economic section of the War Cabinet, and those in the Treasury who blamed unemployment on the structural problems of industry. I have also recorded the views of those in the wider Labour Party, who saw the White Paper proposals as a capitalist rejection of socialism. Nevertheless, it was difficult to quarrel with the main aim of the policy, particularly for those who remembered the miseries of the pre-war years—even though it did not commit a post-war Government to maintaining the full panoply of controls which had regulated employment during the war, as proposed in Labour’s previously published statement on “Full Employment and Financial Policy.” (The statement advocated a 377

Hansard, HC Deb, 21 June 1944, 5th ser. vol. 401, col. 212. Hansard, HC Deb, 21 June 1944, 5th ser. vol. 401, col. 214. 379 Hansard, HC Deb, 21 June 1944, 5th ser. vol. 401, col. 214. 380 Hansard, HC Deb, 21 June 1944, 5th ser. vol.401, col. 214. 378

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mixture of Keynesianism and socialist-style physical planning, ironically, almost the combination that provided the economic ethic of the post-war Attlee administration. Yet the White paper did, at least, suggest a Conservative recognition, described by Peter Clarke as “an incremental encroachment”, that maintaining satisfactory levels of employment through Keynesian-style demand management was at least an option. This recognition, it has been surmised, was eased by the fact that it was a strand of thought developed between the wars, and during the war, by a non-socialist intelligentsia.381 It is important not to overlook the fact that several Conservatives thought that there was no cure for employment, other than a revival of trade. Indeed, no less a person that Ralph Assheton, the new chairman of the Conservative Party, was recorded by The Times—in echoes of Aneurin Bevan—as being “scathing about the White Paper…which he thinks no better than a series of empty shams.”382 The question, therefore, on this score, is whether the uneasy balances achieved in the White Paper demonstrated at least a flavour of consensus which might be carried forward into the next Parliament. Sir Edward Bridges, Secretary of the Cabinet, certainly felt confident that the policy outlined in the White Paper would be followed by whichever party won the forthcoming election.383 Were the portents of future consensus detectable in the other two White Papers, on Social Insurance and on Health, published in 1944? In so far as the White Paper on Social Insurance (Cmd. 6550, 1944) was put forward as a result of the conclusions reached on the core insurance proposals in the Beveridge Report, it was clearly going to have Labour’s short-term support, at least. This was the case, despite some misgivings about the extent to which it had departed from the Report’s recommendations, with, for example, the symbolic replacement of the term “social security by “national insurance”, and the abandonment of Beveridge’s emphasis on providing a minimum subsistence income. The Conservatives had stronger reservations, of course, which made their probable reaction to the introduction of a potentially strengthened set of legislative proposals by a Labour Government, should that transpire, at the very least unpredictable. The official Party line, however, led by the Tory Reformers, was enthusiastic support; it was hoped that this would create a better impression on the electorate than during the original Beveridge debate. The White Paper was not fully developed during the life of the Coalition, and its overall 381

Peter Clarke, The Keynesian Revolution in the Making, 1924–1936 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 322; Thorpe, A History of the British Labour Party, 98. 382 Diary of R.M. Barrington-Ward, quoted in Addison, The Road to 1945, 246. 383 Lee, The Churchill Coalition, 138.

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intention was to unify and extend the pre-war insurance system rather than to provide income security. It was a clear departure from Beveridge. The signs of consensus, therefore, are hard to find in the positions and attitudes taken up by the parties on this issue. Both were, in effect, playing for time. Public opinion towards these proposals varied between outright scepticism and mild disbelief. Home Intelligence recorded one view, for instance, which expressed the fear that “they’ll give us family allowances for children and then take it away again by reducing the income tax allowance for children.”384 The plans for maintaining post-war levels of employment, though described by The Economist as “revolutionary”, left people unimpressed and raised hardly “a ripple of interest.” Indeed, observers of the situation commented that people’s expectations of what would happen in all these areas when the war ended were basically pessimistic. This was exemplified by the widespread belief that “‘big vested interests’, especially insurance companies, will see that the [Beveridge] proposals [on social insurance] are whittled away.”385 The final document to be considered in our search for consensus between the principal partners in the Coalition Government is the White Paper on a National Health Service, known as the Willink White Paper. There are, unfortunately, few signs of such consensus in the discussions which went on both inside and outside Parliament. Early in 1943, the Government had accepted the need for a comprehensive health service and used the wartime Emergency Medical Service as its model. The White Paper, published in February 1944, confirmed that commitment, although both parties essentially understood that it was a consultation document. What could not have been entirely anticipated, however, was the determined obstruction to the prospective implementation of the White Paper proposals by professional medical interests. The White Paper plans advanced one of Labour’s most cherished aspirations, though there were some contentious issues in the document when it was published: for example, it rejected the concept of health centres, and the future relationship between voluntary and local authority hospitals. Again, as with national insurance, the main focus of the White Paper was on the evolution from the pre-war system, rather than wholesale change. Did such apparently different outlooks signify a post-war future where the wartime willingness to compromise would give way to ideological conflict over policy formulation? Or would consensus be carried forward under the guise of compromise?

384 385

Addison, The Road to 1945, 247. Addison, The Road to 1945, 247.

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Already, the great imponderable in all this—which must have been uppermost in the minds of all MPs as they recorded their views on all of these matters—was how the anticipated general election might turn out. We have, of course, seen the result of the 1945 election. What I want to do now, therefore, is to examine what happened in the aftermath of the election, particularly from the Conservatives’ point of view. Did they, consciously or unconsciously, seek consensus or compromise—or neither?

CHAPTER SEVEN POST-WAR CONSERVATISM

Historians have disagreed about the extent to which politicians—whether deliberately or tactically—abandoned their ideological labels between 1945 and 1951, and accepted compromises about the course of future politics and policies. This chapter examines a particular element of this issue. Did Winston Churchill’s Conservative Opposition help or hinder whatever form of consensus lay behind the Attlee Governments’ creation of the Welfare State? And what were the pressures, both external and internal, that determined the course of events?386 As previously discussed, it was broadly accepted by the second half of the 1970s that the immediate post-war period witnessed a convergence of opinion across the lines that traditionally separated the Labour and Conservative Parties on social reform. When Labour took office in 1945 and thus determined the substance and pace of events, it was the Conservatives who moved to accommodate their political opponents, in adopting many of their reforming impulses. Such impulses derived, in large part, from the recommendations of the 1942 Beveridge Report; from the wartime Coalition collaboration on Education and Family Allowances legislation; and from the formulation of future policies for achieving full post-war employment. They were nurtured by the expectation that British society’s united behaviour during the war had earned it improvements in the general quality of life.387 As we have seen, however, claims that the idea of a post-war, Labour-driven consensus is a myth and that what emerged in the 386

The exact origins of the term “welfare state” in British politics are unknown. Although it was used in 1941 by an Archbishop of York, it was not adopted by the Labour Party until Clement Attlee deployed it before the 1950 election. Even in usage since that date, it is not clear how wide a meaning is intended. Is it meant “to embrace virtually the whole of the economic and social history of Britain”, and particularly those aspects of it developed between 1945 and 1951? Or should it cover only those devoted to personal social security, such as pensions, insurance benefits and health services. Timmins, The Five Giants, 6–7. 387 Addison, The Road to 1945.

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Conservative Party between 1945 and 1951 was, instead, a new “humanised capitalism” in tune with international rather than purely domestic circumstances and beliefs.388 At the core of this “humanised capitalism” was the “rejection of the use of the state as a tool to redistribute wealth or to maintain egalitarian trends introduced during the war years.”389 According to this doctrine, if there was any sort of “buy-in”, it occurred in 1951, after Labour accepted a modified expression of Conservative values, rather than in 1945 when the Conservatives adopted Labour’s progressivism. Peter Ackroyd expresses a different view in the final volume of his The History of England: A forgotten irony lies in the notion of the post-war consensus, since in truth it had been developed under both Labour and Tory auspices. By the midFifties, however, notions of a grand ideological confrontation existed only as fodder for journalists. The belief that the state must support its citizens if it is to demand anything of them had been tacitly absorbed by all parties. The post-war consensus was at last in place.390

There are, then, conflicting views about the sources of, the rationale for, and the nature of, the Conservative reaction to the post-war Labour Government’s formal creation of the ‘Welfare State’ social programme. The question now is to determine how far any of them can be justified, through a careful examination of the Opposition’s behaviour, both in Parliament and in public. The reorganisation of the Conservative Party in the immediate aftermath of a crushing election defeat provides a suitable starting point. It was not easy. Alan Clark describes the atmosphere at the time as being one of “[t]orpor and fatalism—a feeling that the tide had turned irreversibly [and] that the sheer weight of electoral numbers would keep the party out of office for as long as could be foreseen.” Going even further, he claims that it was being said by some that “[u]niversal suffrage means the end of the Conservative Party.”391 Other Conservatives explained the defeat in different ways. “Chips” Channon, for example, described himself as “stunned and shocked by the country’s treachery”, while former Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin saw it as “the classic example of democratic

388

Jones and Kandiah, ed., The Myth of Consensus. Harriet Jones, “A Bloodless Counter-Revolution: The Conservative Party and the Defence of Inequality, 1945–51”, in The Myth of Consensus, eds. Jones and Kandiah. 390 P. Ackroyd, The History of England, vol vi, Innovation (London: Picador, Pan MacMillan (2021), 289. 391 Clark, The Tories, 264. 389

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ingratitude.”392 By way of explaining the shocked, post-election policy vacuum Alan Clark suggested an almost a negative view of how “consensus” emerges: As almost invariably happens when a party feels itself to have been the subject of total rejection by the electorate, the solution was seen to be in assuming as close a resemblance as possible to the opponents by whom the defeat had been inflicted…to offer little more than a “new” team, fresher and more amiable, who would maintain continuity and [show itself] anxious to avoid the odium of opposing the social policies of the [new] government.393

In such a situation, many Party leaders would have felt it incumbent on them to resign, if not immediately, then after the processes of choosing a new leader had been completed. As Churchill had already turned seventy and had fought an exhausting war, his departure to enjoy a more than well-earned retirement, secure in the huge esteem in which he was held, would not have been cause for surprise. But despite being “rejected by the electorate in the only general election he had fought as Party Leader, he told Charles Eade that he could not desert the Conservative Party and, even more convincingly perhaps that ‘Politics was life blood to him.”’ In any case, in Churchill’s view, “electoral defeat fitted into a grand historical scheme of successful heroic adventure followed by expulsion from power by an ungrateful people”. In this respect, he could recall Marlborough’s treatment by Queen Anne, and Clemenceau’s rejection by the French people after the First World War. Churchill’s sense of his own standing would almost certainly have been reinforced if Lord Hailsham had told him that again and again “during the election campaign he [Hailsham] had been greeted by voters who had ‘exclaimed absurdly’ that they wanted Winston as Prime Minister, but a Labour Government.”394 392

Ramsden, The Age of Churchill and Eden, 86–7. Clark, The Tories, 266. 394 Lord Hailsham, A Sparrow’s Flight (London: Collins, 1990), 216 and 234–5, quoted in Timmins, The Five Giants, 62. Lord Hailsham’s own view was very different. As he wrote in 1990, “I believe Churchill himself was one of the prime causes of the magnitude of the [election] disaster. Despite his genius, which was amazing, his whole career shows him to have been one of the worst electioneers of the century. He had absolutely no idea of how other people felt or thought. He lost more seats at by-elections and general elections than almost anybody else in my experience. A glance at the number of seats he lost during his long career, Leicester, Dundee, Westminster, Oldham, et cetera et cetera tells its own tale”…If “he had heeded the warnings of the younger elements in the party, represented by my colleagues in the Tory Reform Committee, instead of regarding us as ‘rebels’ or ‘the enemy’ who deserved to have ‘their noses rubbed in their own mess’, I believe that 393

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An astute comment on Churchill’s attitude at the time is offered by Reginald Maudling. Mrs. Churchill’s remark to her husband in Maudling’s presence that the election defeat “may be a blessing in disguise” elicited from Churchill the response that it was “a pretty effective disguise.” Churchill’s reaction was followed, however, by further comments which left Maudling with the impression that Churchill recognised that: [t]here had not been an overthrow of individual liberty, which many, including Winston, had feared, and that while he had fought tooth and nail against the Socialists, I think he realised, as other lesser minds do not, that this country cannot be permanently governed by one Party, that we must operate within a framework where change is possible, and that what is essential is to ensure that change takes place within an agreed acceptance of basic political liberty.395

Maudling’s overall assessment of Churchill, largely formed during his days as a member of the Conservative Research Department (CRD), where one of his jobs had been to help Churchill with background work on his speeches, could not be more complimentary. “Winston stood alone”, he wrote. “There was a power, a vision and a magic about the man which I have encountered nowhere else.”396 As Churchill made clear to Cabinet Secretary Sir Edward Bridges, his ideal type of Government was a coalition above the partisan fray, one that commanded nationwide support. This explains “his regret over the end of his alliance with Labour and the prospect of sinking from a national to a party leader.” It also throws light on why, when he constructed his Caretaker ministry after Labour left the Coalition, he had drafted into it a number of non-Conservative figures, including the independent Sir John Anderson as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Liberal National Leader, Ernest Brown, as Minister for Aircraft Production.397 Yet whatever dismay Churchill might have felt at the outcome of the election, he had no intention of giving up the Party leadership, despite the fact that in the spring of 1946 a frustrated Anthony Eden, fearing the emergence of a rival for succession to the leadership, openly asked him to retire in his favour. By then Churchill was spending increasingly long periods abroad. In 1946, for instance, he enjoyed a prolonged stay in the United States, in the course of which he had we might just have edged ourselves to victory under the banner of Churchill’s huge and justified personal popularity.” 395 Reginald Maudling, Memoirs (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1978), 38. 396 Maudling, Memoirs, 44. 397 Leo McKinstry, Attlee and Churchill: Allies in War, Adversaries in Peace (London: Atlantic Books, 2019), 409.

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delivered his famous “Iron Curtain” speech in Fulton Missouri, President Truman’s home State. When not abroad, he devoted much of his time to working on his memoirs and painting. Consequently, the Shadow Cabinet sent the Chief Whip, James Stuart, to urge Churchill to retire. Stuart recorded that Churchill reacted angrily to the suggestion, “banging the floor with his stick and implying that I too had joined those who were plotting to displace him.”398 As he told his constituents soon afterwards, he would soldier on until he had turned out the Socialists. Despite, or perhaps because of, his standing as an international Titan, however, there was a growing feeling that he had lost interest in the more mundane, domestic, peacetime demands of the House of Commons. Indeed, as Andrew Roberts puts it, he undertook the duties of Leader of the Opposition “entirely on his own terms…all the time yearning [for] the international stage.” From the very beginning of his spell in Opposition, his attendances in the House of Commons were sporadic. When he did attend, he was thought to be “too fond of provoking Parliamentary rows instead of making speeches about future policies.”399 Lord Cranborne complained to his father, the Marquess of Salisbury, that “[h]e is not in fact leading the Party.”400 Indeed, quite often, when an adversarial policy was put to him for endorsement, he would reject it on the grounds that what the Government was proposing had been agreed while he was Coalition Leader, and that he was therefore bound to support it. As Charles Williams notes: Churchill’s method of conducting Parliamentary business was, to say the least, bizarre. Every other Wednesday he entertained some fourteen of his closest colleagues to a large and bibulous lunch at the Savoy Hotel, apparently to discuss forthcoming business. No portfolios, as such, were allocated. It was generally assumed that Eden would lead on foreign affairs and that Oliver Stanley and Oliver Lyttelton would lead on economics and finance, with support from Butler and Macmillan as occasion required. None of that, however, prevented any of them from speaking on other matters as they felt so moved.401

Another problem about Churchill’s failure to provide effective leadership—his penchant for coalition apart—was his ambivalence about Conservatism. He was never a straightforward Tory, and he often looked 398

James Stuart, Within the Fringe: An Autobiography (London: Bodley Head, 1967), 144. 399 Charles Williams, Harold Macmillan (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2009), 182. 400 Williams, Macmillan, 182. 401 Williams, Macmillan, 182.

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back with nostalgia to his years as a Liberal. He had split with the Tory Party in 1903 when Joseph Chamberlain launched his crusade for tariff reform; protectionism appalled Churchill, a convinced free trader. He recognised that if he were to have any future in politics, he would have to transfer his allegiance and he opted to sit as a Liberal backbencher from May 1904. In the 1906 election, he denounced Tory policy as “the greedy gospel of material expediency.” He served in the pre-First World War, wartime, and post-war Liberal Governments, although he left government briefly after the Gallipoli disaster for which, as First Lord of the Admiralty, he was held accountable. Later, after the post-war collapse of Liberalism, he rejoined the Conservative Party, as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Stanley Baldwin’s second Government in 1924.402 The state of his convictions by the time he became Leader of the Opposition in 1945 was made clear in a debate on 28 October 1947, when he set out an almost libertarian Tory alternative to socialism that revealed the influence of Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom: Establish a basic standard of life and labour and provide the necessary basic foods for all. Once that is done, set the people free—get out of the way, and let them all make the best of themselves, and win whatever prizes they can for their families and for their country. Only in this way will Britain be able to keep alive and feed its disproportionate population, who were all brought into existence here upon the tides of freedom, and will all be left stranded and gasping by the Socialist ebb. Only in this way will an active, independent, property-owning democracy be established.403

Until this point, he had—like his father, Lord Randolph Churchill— broadly followed the precepts of the Conservative leader Benjamin Disraeli, that combined imperialism abroad with progressive social reform at home. The concept of free enterprise had, however, always been central to his Tory Democratic paternalist ideas, and he had colourfully explained the link between those ideas and the free market in a speech in Glasgow almost forty years earlier: I am sure that if the vision of a fair Utopia which cheers the hearts and lights the imagination of the toiling multitudes, should ever break into reality, it will be the development through, and modifications in, and by improvements out of the existing competitive organisation of society…Where you find that

402

McKinstry, Attlee and Churchill, 32. Andrew Roberts, Churchill: Walking With Destiny (London: Allen Lane, 2018), 902.

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State enterprise is likely to be ineffective, then utilise private enterprises, and do not grudge them their profits.404

There had long been a debate over the Conservative “theory of the state.” As the Party grappled with the Attlee Government in the post-war period, concerns over this issue continued. The State’s responsibility was central to the work of numerous wartime Commissions, and varying viewpoints had emerged within the Conservatives. Some imagined that the State’s interventionist policies had a place in post-war government, while others thought that the State should take a lighter approach now that the war was over. These different perspectives hampered agreement over how the Party should address the problems posed by the Beveridge Report.405 It was W.H. Greenleaf who drew the distinction between “paternalist” and “libertarian” Conservatism. Unfortunately, many have seen this as implying rigid predispositions to either “Statism” or “anti-Statism”, or to “Collectivism” or “Individualism.” Such absolute demarcations are, of course misleading. At any one time, depending on the circumstances, the balance between the various inclinations can shift in the minds of even the most seemingly convinced Conservatives. I would argue that this must have been one of the causes of the confusion which was apparent in the Party in the immediate post-war years; and I would go even further, and suggest that the passages from the two Churchill speeches quoted above are clear demonstrations of this phenomenon. Churchill’s move towards a more libertarian Conservatism after the war was almost certainly a reflection of his deep antipathy to seeing a Socialist Government in power.406 Or, as Ewen Green puts it, critiquing Greenleaf’s analysis, “throughout the twentieth century, individuals and groups within the party have…held and expressed libertarian and paternalist views on different questions at the same time.”407 As outlined above, the major practical problem was Churchill’s obvious lack of interest in domestic politics during a time when international affairs were still dangerously unstable. Advice issued to local parties by Conservative Party Headquarters before the 1945 general election showed that the potential difficulty inherent in Churchill’s attitude was

404

Robert R. James, Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, Vol 1, 1897– 1908 (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1974), 677, quoted in Roberts, Churchill, 108–9. 405 Green, Ideologies of Conservatism, 242–43. 406 Greenleaf, British Political Tradition Vol II, 189. 407 Green, Ideologies of Conservatism, 241.

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clearly recognised. For instance, among five Election “NOTS” identified in June 1945 were these two seeking to deflect criticism of Churchill: x

x

The General Election is NOT a purely domestic concern, because Stalin, Truman, de Gaulle, Tito and other outstanding leaders are most anxious to know whether they will be “playing ball” with Churchill—or with Attlee. The General Election does NOT, as Socialists allege, change Mr Churchill from the man they were proud to work with in the late Coalition Government into a bone-headed reactionary, a stool pigeon for “Big Business”, or a puppet of Private Monopoly, Profiteers and Racketeers.408

After anxieties over policy were aired at the 1946 October Party Conference, Churchill was almost bullied at a Shadow Cabinet meeting on 16 October into an agreement that a Committee to formulate Industrial Policy would be established.409 The Committee was chaired by Butler who, at the time, was also chairing the successor body to the Post-War Problems Central Committee. Butler thus wielded considerable authority over future policy development, and this was further enhanced when, against Churchill’s wishes, he was appointed Chairman of the Conservative Research Department (CRD). Other members of the Committee included Harold Macmillan, David Maxwell Fife, Oliver Stanley, and Oliver Lyttelton.410 After private discussions around the country with selected groups of Conservative businessmen and trade unionists, as well as with key members of the 1922 Committee, Butler and his team eventually produced a report. This was published in May 1947 as the Industrial Charter: A

408

CPA PUB 223/1, “Five Election ‘NOTS’”, 15 June 1945. CPA, LCC1/1/1. Conclusions of Consultative Committee Meeting, 16 October 1946. 410 Butler describes the attributes and contributions of some of his Committee colleagues in grateful terms. “Neither David Maxwell Fyfe nor Harold Macmillan was a stranger to the accusation of being pink…I admired the economic doctrines of [Macmillan’s] The Middle Way…and a great deal of the intellectual background of the Industrial Charter was due to him. Along with David Eccles, whose thrusting mind was particularly reflected in the economic and financial sections of the Charter, he affected its positive content more than my other helpers on the Committee. Oliver Stanley…was the most capable of us all…Without his insistent influence, which was happily seconded by Anthony Eden, the Industrial Policy Committee might never have been set up and his critical wit…saved us from many a mishap or mistake.” See Butler, The Art of the Possible, 146–47. 409

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Statement of Conservative Industrial Policy, after it was approved at a Shadow Cabinet meeting chaired by Eden. Its reception attracted both enthusiastic eulogy and lukewarm condescension, but open hostility was predictably confined to the far Right and the far Left. The Beaverbrook press attacked it as a compromise which the British people would never support: “If the Left fails, they will turn to the Right but never half-Right.” The “Crossbencher” column of the Daily Express told readers on 15 May 1947 that Macmillan “once wrote a political treatise called The Middle Way and that this was the ‘second edition.”’411 John Boyd-Carpenter described the Industrial Charter as occupying “a central position between Manchester and Moscow”, a sentiment which Macmillan seized upon. In the run-up to the 1950 general election, he said that he had been flattered by the description of the Industrial Charter as a second edition of The Middle Way, but that he was concerned that the Conservative economic policy still contained too much “Manchesterism.”412 With a few qualifications, the Charter represented conventional Tory thinking. It commended private enterprise and incentives, rejected nationalisation in principle, called for a reduction in State spending and taxation, and expressed opposition to the trade unions’ closed shop. It also supported the continuation of free collective bargaining and the idea of industrial co-partnership and joint production councils. Yet in between these broadly acceptable Conservative positions, it also advocated a more corporatist approach to economic management, in tandem with the trade unions and industrialists. It also called for maintaining a high and stable level of employment—shades of John Maynard Keynes, who had died a year earlier. There was no commitment to return to private ownership any industries which might be nationalised by a Labour Government. The Tory Right (and Lord Beaverbrook) jibbed at these latter suggestions for future policies, but were outmanoeuvred when the Industrial Charter was approved by the 1922 Committee, and then routed when the 1947 Conservative Party Conference gave the document its overwhelming support. At this point Churchill thought that he, too, should endorse it. Such high levels of support encouraged the Tory modernisers to play an increasingly influential part in future policy-making, though Churchill’s basic attitude to producing policies in vacuo remained unchanged. As he explained it, “[i]t is dangerous to prescribe until you are called in [to office]”, for fear of committing a future Conservative Government. He 411

Harold Macmillan, Tides of Fortune, 1945–1955 (London: Macmillan, 1969), 307. 412 Ramsden, The Age of Churchill and Eden, 156, quoted in Green, Ideologies of Conservatism, 254.

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regarded policy-making in the domestic sphere as something for the Government rather than for Oppositions, and beyond that, as: un-English and typical more of Socialism than Conservatism…When an Opposition spells out its policy in detail, the Government becomes the Opposition and attacks the Opposition which becomes the Government. So, having failed to win the “sweets” of office’ it fails equally to enjoy the “benefits” of being out of office.413

The Industrial Charter, which has been written off by some as “mere words”, “a delectable piece of political fudge”, or as “Pansy-pink”, but which has been seen by others as “the definitive point at which the Conservative Party became the party of freedom and the free market”, was a product of and for its times.414 It was an exercise in politics rather than economics or industrial policy-making, “more important for its very existence than for any actual proposal that it contained.”415 More expansively, Paul Addison saw it as confirmation of his “consensus” theory, noting that it provided evidence of the completion of the “convergence of the two main parties.”416 Its real purpose, however, was to rally Party opinion rather than influence the uncommitted electorate. Linking it with the later Agricultural Charter, Butler explained its purpose in rather more grandiose terms: Peel’s Tamworth manifesto made a rallying point for Conservatism in much the same way as our Charters made a rallying point. And I was definitely aware of the need to copy the Tamworth Manifesto, not in its content, which dated it, but in the type of document it was.

Butler later noted pithily: We were out-peeling Peel in giving the party a painless but permanent facelift: the more unflamboyant the changes, the less likely were the features to sag again. Our first purpose was to counter the charge and the fear that we were the party of industrial go-as-you-please and devil-take-thehindmost, that full employment and the Welfare State were not safe in our hands…Our second purpose was to present a recognisable alternative to the reigning orthodoxies of Socialism—not to put the clock back, but to reclaim

413

Philip Goodhart and Ursula Branston, The 1922: the Story of the Conservative Backbenchers’ Parliamentary Committee (London: Macmillan, 1973), 143; Ramsden, The Age of Churchill and Eden, 142. 414 Willetts and Forsdyke, After the Landslide, 67–68, 69. 415 Ramsden, The Age of Churchill and Eden, 153. 416 Addison, The Road to 1945, 275.

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a prominent role for individual initiative and private enterprise in the mixed and managed economy.417

Some, including Butler’s biographer, Anthony Howard, believe that the passages referring to the need “to humanise not to nationalise industry” gave the Industrial Charter a “musty, period flavour.” Howard does though acknowledge that Butler, as the son-in-law of the chairman of the “progressively-minded firm of Courtaulds”, attached “particular importance to this kind of co-partnership view of industry.” Going further, he thinks that the influence of Sam Courtauld can be detected throughout the final report.418 It is John Ramsden, however, who waxes most lyrical. “The Industrial Charter”, he writes, took “its place along with the Tamworth Manifesto, with Disraeli’s Crystal Palace Speech of 1872 and with Baldwin’s speeches of 1924 as a pointer to the way in which Party policy would develop, at a time when this was by no means clear.”419 It was “by no means clear” because Churchill did not intend that it should be.420 His philosophy, stated on more than one occasion during the Opposition years, was not to give hostages to fortune. As he had made clear before the Party Conference: I do not believe in looking about for some panacea or cure-all on which we should stake our credit and fortunes, and which we should try to sell in a hurry like a patent medicine to all and sundry…We ought not to seek after some rigid symmetrical formula of doctrine such as delights the mind of Socialists or communists.421

Such a firmly-held attitude on Churchill’s part accounts for the fact that in 1947, the Whips had to tell the Party’s MPs that the Charter should not be regarded as the final word in industrial policy. This could come only from the Leader himself—a reflection of the Party’s traditional approach to policy-making. According to Christopher Patten, however, “in practice the Leader carries out his work in consultation with…his chosen colleagues in the Cabinet or Shadow Cabinet and with members of the parliamentary party”, and those members of the party outside parliament. John Ramsden argues that the Conservative “party is more oriented towards leadership than 417

Butler, The Art of the Possible, 148–49. Howard, RAB, 155. 419 Ramsden, Making of Conservative Party Policy, 112. 420 “The success of the Industrial Charter owed little or nothing to any support given to it by Churchill. From its publication date on 17 May to his Party Conference speech on 4 October he had, in fact, nothing to say about it.” Howard, RAB, 156. 421 Quoted in Ramsden, Churchill and Eden, 142–43. 418

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other British parties, and that the Leader can usually get his way on an issue if determined to do so.”422 Michael Wolff, writing in the late 1970s, expressed even greater certainty on this issue: Policy-making in the Conservative Party lies entirely in the preserve of the Leader of the party and through him or her of the Cabinet or shadow cabinet. This is no mere formal statement of the constitutional position: it is what has been happening, certainly for the past 30 years. It applies to strategy as well as tactics, to broad principle as well as the minutiae of day-to-day action.423

The general viewpoint—certainly before the procedural changes introduced at the time of Harold Macmillan’s resignation in 1963—was that the Conservative Party was (and always had been) a “top-down” party, in contrast to other parties in Britain and especially with Labour. As Robert McKenzie noted in the 1950s, “It would be difficult to imagine a more tightknit system of oligarchical control” (emphasis in original text).424 All indications suggest that Churchill saw matters from 1945 onwards as both McKenzie and Wolff would describe them. This is not surprising, given the manner in which he had directed the war effort, and his powerful sense of his own infallibility. While he may have been content to leave the shaping of domestic policies in other hands in line with his preoccupation with international affairs and his disinclination to involve himself in the day-to-day “minutiae” of leading a party in opposition, this did not mean that he was prepared simply to rubber stamp their conclusions, as the instructions that he issued from time to time clearly show. So far as he was concerned, the Party tradition had always been to leave the last word on policy-making to the Leader, and his disposition was to act uncompromisingly in accordance with tradition.425 In more general terms, when we come to assess the longer-term effect of the Industrial Charter, it has to be recognised that the traditional 422

Christopher Patten, “Policy-making in opposition”, in Making Of Conservative Party Politics, ed. Zig Layton-Henry (London: Macmillan, 1980), 10; Ramsden, Making of Conservative Party Policy, 2. 423 Michael Wolff, “Policy-making in the Conservative party”, in People and Parliament, ed. John P. Mackintosh (London: Saxon House, 1978), 112. 424 Robert McKenzie, British Political Parties. The Distribution of Power Within the Conservative and Labour Parties (London: Mercury Books, 1955), 291. 425 In 1949, The Economist was still representing the situation in unambiguous terms: “day to day policy is settled by Mr. Churchill with his shadow cabinet, whose membership he selects as he would select the membership of a real Cabinet in office.” The Economist, Notes of the Week, 12 March, 1949.

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Conservative mindset is not attuned to change.426 Conservative instinct has always been to leave things as they are, to make the best of “what is”, rather than to venture into the unknown territory of “what might be.” Such an attitude is not necessarily regressive, but it is certainly not progressive. It seeks to build on existing foundations, rather than to tear the whole edifice down and build anew. In the words of Michael Oakeshott: The general characteristics [of the conservative disposition]…centre upon the propensity to use and enjoy what is available rather than to wish for or to look for something else…[to] value highly every appearance of continuity…[People of this disposition] contend that there is absolute value in the free play of human choice, that private property (the emblem of choice) is a natural right, that it is only in the enjoyment of diversity of opinion and activity that true belief and good conduct can be expected to disclose themselves.427

Roger Scruton broadly agrees with this assessment: We may feel tempted to experiment with other forms of political order. But experiments [of this nature] are dangerous, since nobody knows how to predict or to reverse the results of them…The wise policy is to accept the arrangements, however imperfect, that have evolved through custom and inheritance, to improve them by small adjustments, but not to jeopardise them by large-scale alterations, the consequences of which nobody can really envisage. The case for this approach was unanswerably set before us by Burke in his Reflections on the French Revolution, and subsequent history has repeatedly confirmed his view of things.428

Scruton adds that “like Burke, T.S. Eliot recognised the difference between a backward-looking nostalgia and a genuine tradition, which grants us the courage and the vision with which to live in the modern world.”429 Quintin Hogg (Lord Hailsham) developed the classic statement of what Conservatism means in The Case for Conservatism, published soon after the 1945 defeat. A key passage reads: The Conservative does not believe that the power of politics to put things right in this world is unlimited. This is because there are inherent limitations 426

“Conservatism is riveted in a continuing effort by established elites to generate confidence in the prevailing structure of power.” Robert Eccleshall, “English Conservatism as Ideology,” Political Studies 25/1 (March 1977): 62. 427 Oakeshott, Rationalism, 187. 428 Roger Scruton, A Political Philosophy: Arguments for Conservatism (London: Continuum, 2006), 2, 194. 429 Scruton, A Political Philosophy.

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Chapter Seven on what may be achieved by political means, but partly because man is an imperfect creature with a streak of evil as well as good in his inmost nature. By bitter experience Conservatives know that there are almost no limits to the misery or degradation to which bad governments may sink and depress their victims. But whilst others extol the virtues of the particular branch of Utopia they propose to create, the Conservative disbelieves them all, and, despite all temptations, offers in their place no Utopia but something quite modestly better than the present. He may, and should, have a programme. He certainly has, as will be shown, a policy. But of catchwords, slogans, visions, ideal states of society, classless societies, new orders, of all the tinsel and finery with which modern political charlatans charm their jewels from the modern political savage, the Conservative has nothing to offer. He would rather die than sell such trash, and consequently it is said wrongly by those who have something of this sort on their trays that he has no policy, and still more wrongly by those who value success above honour that he ought to find one. But if he is to be true to the light that is in him, the Conservative must maintain that the stuff of all such visions political is either illusion (in which case they are to be pitied) or chicanery (in which case they are to be condemned.430

Hogg stated this position colourfully, as was his wont. If he saw this as the ideological situation with which the Party was faced at the time, it can also be regarded as an approach that matched Churchill’s instinct in 1945.431 Stanley Baldwin had epitomised this mindset par excellence.432 The Party had learned its lessons the hard way. Ambitious attempts at fundamental realignment had usually preceded long periods in the political wilderness. The most shattering defeats in the history of the Party in 1832, 1846, and 1906 were sustained after divisive and drastic realignments of policies, or

430

Q. Hogg, The Case for Conservatism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1947),14. In a profile of Butler in the Daily Herald in 1948, a year after the publication of the Industrial Charter, Michael Foot put what he called the Conservative predicament in literary/historical (albeit partisan) terms. “Have they the foggiest idea of where they want to go?” he asked. Disraeli posed the same question in one of his novels. “But after all”, he wrote, “who were to form the Government and what was the Government to be? Was it to be a Tory Government or an EnlightenmentSpirit-of-the-Age Liberal Moderate Reform Government? Was it to be a Government of high philosophy or low practice? Of principle or expediency? Nothing can be pumped out of Party Leader Churchill.” These are great questions for “a down-at-heel Opposition.” RAB G20/29, Daily Herald, 5 May 1948. 432 “Like most refurbishings of Conservatism, Baldwin’s was concerned with attitudes and responses rather than with abstract theory or concrete policy.” Ramsden, Age of Balfour and Baldwin, 207. 431

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attempted realignments.433 When faced by the nature and extent of the changes which the new Labour Government was proposing to make after the 1945 election—even though most of them had been foreshadowed in the preparatory work done by the wartime Coalition—the first instinct of the Party as a whole was to batten down the hatches and ride out the storm. Some have seen that reaction, however, as indicative of what has been described as the Party’s “distinctive characteristic” of being able “to mould its plumage at the right political season without really altering its gestalt.”434 Furthermore, the fact that the two main parties had been close to one another during the war “made it difficult for Conservatives to brand as ‘enemies of the state’ respected Labour Ministers who had helped run the war”, particularly when the Coalition “had generated a considerable measure of agreement about what needed to be done in the field of Reconstruction.” During the war years, “uncompromising dissent had been largely confined to groups of party members remote from power.”435 Goodhart and Branston are thus of the opinion that apart from a predictable sense of outrage at the ingratitude of the electorate in so rudely dismissing from office the Great War Leader, the Party showed every sign of not knowing how to react. Its principal immediate concern was over how to oppose, rather than with what to propose: What general tactics should the Opposition adopt? Was it right to try and hold up the Labour Government’s legislative programme for as long as possible?...Captain Harry Crookshank, who was already establishing a reputation as the Party’s leading tactical expert in the House, was ready to reply—intelligence and teamwork were all important. Weaker Ministers should be exposed and deficiencies in administration should be probed. Where it lay in the Opposition’s hands, business should be arranged to cause 433 Willetts

and Forsdyke, After the Landslide, 4. Modern Tories would undoubtedly add to this list the defeat of 1997, when the attempted reform of the local rating system proved a reform too far and, together with continued wrangling over Europe, led in due course to electoral disaster and to a period of decline which was not reversed until 2010. 434 Arnold Beichman, “The Conservative Research Department: The Care and Feeding of Future Political Elite,” Journal of British Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2 (May 1974): 92. “No reform, no innovation, stinks so foully in the nostrils of an English Tory politician as to be absolutely irreconcilable to him. When taken in the refreshing waters of office any such pill can be swallowed”, Anthony Trollope, The Bertrams (London: Chapman and Hall, 1854), quoted in William L. Burn, “The Conservative Tradition and its Reformulations”, in Law and Opinion in England in the Twentieth Century, ed. Morris Ginsberg (London: Stevens and Sons Ltd., 1959), 43. 435 Searle, Country Before Party, 223–25.

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Chapter Seven the Government the maximum inconvenience, but where Ministers were strong and competent, the best weapon was silence or idle chatter…It was comparatively rare for the discussion to move from the tactical level to the strategic.436

At one level this was perfectly understandable. The broad proposals in the Labour Party Manifesto had still to be given legislative form. Quite apart from the division of opinion between the diehard right and the reform-minded left over the direction of future policies, the commitments in the Party’s own 1945 Manifesto—which had obviously not appealed to voters—were still too new to allow them to be jettisoned wholesale. Churchill had also made his position very clear in a note which his Chief Whip sent round to members of the Shadow Cabinet, not long after declaration of their electoral defeat: I have received a cable [wrote the Chief Whip] from Mr. Churchill, in which he informs me that it is his intention to hold a meeting of his Consultative Committee early in October to discuss the line which the Opposition should pursue in dealing with large questions of policy. He hopes that in public speeches none of the Ministers of the late Government will make announcements upon these issues before he has had an opportunity of discussing these matters with them, lest anything should be said which might hamper the action of the Opposition.437

Furthermore, when an Advisory Committee on Policy and Political Education (ACPPE) was set up by the Central Council of the Conservative Party, its remit was to help provide the necessary material on which longterm policy would be based—but not to lay down Party policy. Indeed, for its first meeting, its agenda invited members to discuss “Conservative faith and principles”, not policies. Anything less designed to point to a policy way forward would be difficult to imagine.438 Many within the Conservative Party were convinced that with its well-known antipathy to planning, it was less well-equipped than Labour to oversee the building of the New Jerusalem, as portended largely and popularly by the Beveridge Report. They also thought that that Churchill’s anti-Bolshevik past might lead him to involve the country in a new war against communism, whereas under Labour “Left would be able to speak to Left.” There was little appreciation among the population at large of the 436

Goodhart and Branston, The 1922, 141–42. CPA, LCC 3/1/1. Chief Whip to members of the Consultative Committee, 26 September 1945. 438 CPA, ACP 1/1, Agenda for ACPPE meeting, 19 February 1946. 437

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depth of the economic crisis facing the country, when such an understanding might have brought to mind vivid memories of Labour ineptitude and inefficiency when faced with circumstances of a similar nature in 1931. As John Maynard [Lord] Keynes told the Labour Government in 1945, “the financial problems of the war have been surmounted so easily and silently that the average man sees no reason to suppose that the financial problems of the peace will be any more difficult.”439 The lapse of time had stood matters on their head. The steady increase in economic stability in the 1930s had led some (if not Lord Woolton) to believe that the Conservatives would have won a 1940 election, when memories of Labour attempts at government were still fresh in people’s minds. Now, however, such attitudes had been obscured by the sense of wartime achievement, of what the country was owed for its efforts, and of the opportunity which victory presented for a new beginning.440 This analysis suggests that in the immediate post-election period, it is quite possible that there were almost as many shades of opinion about how the Conservative Party should position itself as an Opposition party as there were Conservative members of Parliament. Everybody wanted his voice heard, but no single voice was strong enough to rise above the cacophony and drown out all the rest. This, then, raises the question of how and when—or indeed whether—the Party regained a sense of coherence on policy matters. Before examining how it opposed the main social reform legislation of 1946 and 1947, I want to take a forward look at how matters stood in 1949. In late February 1949, the air of optimism engendered by a series of policy statements after the publication of the Industrial Charter in 1947 was punctured by an unexpected by-election defeat in Hammersmith South. This loss revived concern about Churchill’s uneasy relationship with his Party in his role as Opposition Leader, and deepened Conservative anxieties about the Party’s prospects at the next general election. The Party had expected to win the seat in the light of a run of opinion polls showing a consistent lead of 7 to 8 per cent over Labour, but it was held by the Government with a swing of only 5 per cent to the Conservatives. What made the actual result 439

Quoted in Peter Hennessy, “The Attlee Governments 1945–1951,” in Ruling Performance: British Governments from Attlee to Thatcher, eds. Peter Hennessy and Anthony Seldon (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1989), 35. 440 “I believe that if there had been an election in 1938, the Socialists would have been returned with a considerable majority, for their leaders were expressing the mood of the country and it was a weak and vacillating mood…At that time, the Conservative Party appeared to many people to be without any constructive and compelling policy’. Woolton, Memoirs, 357–58.

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feel even worse was the fact that since the 1945 election, the Conservatives had not gained a single seat from Labour, except in the Glasgow Camlachie by-election in January 1948. There, however, matters had been decided as much by a Labour-ILP feud as by a Conservative resurgence. Concerns about the Party’s lack of progress in winning popular support were underscored in a paper circulated by Mr. H. Hopkinson of the Conservative Research Department.441 It contained the following frank acknowledgement of what, nearly four years after a stunning election defeat, remained a fundamental problem for those at CRD involved in preparing a Policy Statement for the next election: Since the start of the First World War, a complete revolution has taken place in the economic and consequently in the social life of this country. These changes were greatly speeded up by the Second World War. Many of the difficulties of the inter-war years were inherent in a period of transition. Unfortunately, since this has been a “bloodless” revolution, many Conservatives have not recognised its extent and are still trying to return to pre-war days.442

Casting around for someone to blame for their disarray after the loss of Hammersmith South, many Conservatives targeted Churchill. At a meeting of the 1922 Committee on 19 September 1945, Churchill had promised that either he or Sir Anthony Eden would be present for major debates. A few days later, during a debate on the Government’s mismanagement of the country’s affairs, he delivered a rumbustious speech that disarmed those who were doubtful about his general commitment to Opposition politics. Yet by 1947, when he had been absent from Parliament for much longer periods than anyone had anticipated, and had spent so much time abroad, James Stuart, as we have seen, had been despatched to urge him to retire—but to no avail. In 1949, however, after the 1922 Committee conducted an inquest into the handling of the Hammersmith South campaign, criticism of Churchill re-emerged, and he was once again forced to pacify the Committee by promising an early statement of policy and by undertaking to give his full attention to electioneering.443 In a leading article, commenting on the by-election result, The Economist broadly agreed with Churchill’s view about the futility of making policy in vacuo, but only up to a point:

441

On the Conservative Research Department, see Chapters Three and Four. CPA, CRD 2/50/10. Paper circulated to Policy Sub-Committee of Consultative Committee, 7 April 1949. 443 Goodhart and Branston, The 1922, 146–48. 442

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There are dangers in a party having too cut and dried a policy while in opposition. But a party must stand for something; if it has not precise policies it should have principles…It is here that the Conservatives have shown themselves to be woefully deficient.444

The disquiet within the Party after Hammersmith South was deeper than that felt earlier when, to a large degree, the Party had still been finding its feet in Opposition. The charge at the 1922 Committee which Churchill attended on 3 March 1949 was led by Quintin Hogg, who argued that the general tenor of Conservative propaganda a showed that the Party lacked positive idealism and that it was principally concerned with “snarling and whining” at the enemy. Hogg felt, moreover, that the majority of the Party was taking too gloomy a view of the economic future. Churchill explained the Party’s dilemma, as he saw it, not as a search for principles, but as a matter of simple politics. The record of the meeting noted Churchill’s speech in the following manner: Living on American aid—Government squandering—taxation ruinous. Query—Better to lose Election than be responsible for encouraging false hopes? Then we could say, we told you so. If Socialists get second lease of life, evils will be grievous.445

There was renewed pressure for a policy statement at the Party’s Central Council meeting two weeks after the 1922 Committee meeting. As a report of the ACPPE revealed, “The Research Department ha[d] a great deal of material in readiness for the general election with a view to producing a general statement of policy directly this [was] required by Mr. Churchill.”446 Though Lord Woolton shared Churchill’s view that, “[i]t is no use coming out now with a policy and saying to the Socialists, ‘This is the line we are going to the electors with—now you can tear it to pieces’”, the pressure kept on mounting and Churchill kept dragging his feet, a process made somewhat less concerning for a time, however, by a good set of London County Council results in May.447 Lord Woolton had himself earlier commissioned Butler to convene a Committee urgently to prepare proposals on unemployment, and after the Hammersmith defeat Woolton suggested that the Butler recommendations required more substantive work and should be redrafted. This was, of 444

The Economist, 5 March, 1949. Goodhart and Branston, The 1922, 146–47. 446 CPA, ACP1/3. Report by ACPPE to Central Council, March 1949. 447 Manchester Dispatch, 19 March, 1949, quoted in Hoffman, The Conservative Party in Opposition, 189. 445

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course, a “complete reversal of all previous instructions from Churchill that policy should not be made in detail”, a fact that Butler pointed out to Woolton in a letter of 7 March.448 Butler added, defensively, that “he had been agreeably surprised by the real success…of the Industrial Charter”, which he said, had “placed the Party on the fairway of modern economic and political thought.” He continued: I must register our intense disappointment that the Charters [Industrial and Agricultural] have been followed up by inadequate publicising and propaganda…We now find, as a result of losing a bye-election, which we never had a great chance of winning, that “Policy in clear and simple terms” is suddenly an imperative.449

Butler’s sense of frustration was unmistakeable. A Policy Committee meeting on 1 April 1949 accepted his proposal that a policy statement that “conformed closely to the wishes of most of his colleagues” should be prepared and published in the summer, but it was decided that Quintin Hogg would mastermind it.450 The result was The Right Road for Britain, which eventually formed the basis of the Manifesto for the February 1950 general election. The Right Road for Britain revealed that, four years after the country had elected a Labour Government, deep fissures still existed in the Conservative Party as it groped its way towards the next election. Hogg, the document’s principal author, complained that the Party had no agreed economic policy, and that he had serious reservations about its policies on the trade unions, education and housing. Oliver Poole complained about Hogg’s implication that Labour’s nationalisation programme would not be unscrambled; Macmillan wanted to emphasise a Conservative commitment to partnership rather than competition; and the Policy Committee removed the pledge that there would be no cuts in spending on the social services. On a later draft, prepared by the Research Department, Hogg thought that a pledge to give first priority to reducing taxation was “bad politics.” Oliver Poole wanted a sharper attack on Labour’s policies, and David Eccles found it hard to distinguish between Conservative policies, as set out in the document, and the Government’s own policies. Others added paragraphs on Food, Women, and Scotland. Woolton, having by this time contracted a dose of cold feet, concluded that the document contained too much detail.451

448

Ramsden, Making Conservative Party Policy, 134. Ramsden, Making Conservative Party Policy, 134. 450 Ramsden, Making Conservative Party Policy, 135. 451 Ramsden, Making Conservative Party Policy, 133–41. 449

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Churchill wrote a foreword to the document in typical Churchillian tones that linked future policy with the legacy of Disraeli and Lord Randolph Churchill, as well as with the “spirit of liberalism”. After much travail, the document was launched on 23 July 1949, still half a year before the next election. The Foreword firmly claimed a large Conservative stake in the conception of “the new Social Services”: The Socialists in the last four years have carried out in a partisan spirit the plans prepared by the national Coalition Government with its large Conservative majority. They have no claim to any achievement of their own...The Conservative Party has welcomed the new Social Services which it has done much to create. We regard them as mainly our own handiwork.452

The document largely stilled the clamour for more central guidance, and provided a rudimentary position, which could be improved as the election approached. Retracing my steps, I now want to examine how the Party had organised itself on a day-to-day basis in the immediate aftermath of the 1945 election to challenge the new Government’s legislative programme. How was routine Opposition actually delivered, particularly in relation to the raft of “welfare state” legislative proposals advanced in the early days of the new administration? In what sort of framework was opposition organised? On the question of a policy framework, a number of commentators have pointed out that during the Coalition years, bodies such as the Tory Reform Committee and the Post-War Problems Committee had carried out much preparatory work in order to “give contemporary content to Conservative principles.” They seem, however, to have made little impact by the time the election was called. Connecting with many of the themes considered thus far in this chapter, W.W. Astor offers the following rationale for this state of affairs: Looking back...it is clear that…we had suffered from the lack of authoritative statements of party policy in the period previous to the election. I stress the word “authoritative.” Before the election the Post-War Problems Committee’s numerous reports, the “Signpost” booklets, the various pamphlets produced by the Tory Reform Committee, were all good, but they were not authoritative. They did not bear the imprimatur of the Prime Minister. There was no evidence that he read them. They were not the themes of speeches by Cabinet Ministers and the Election Manifesto,

452

CPA PUB 238/1, 41–42.

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In the aftermath of such a crushing election defeat, a far more profound question—certainly in philosophical, political, and moral terms— was by what right did the Conservative Party challenge the main directions and specifics of a programme of its opponents which had clearly received such overwhelming support. In coming to grips with this question, the Party had to recognise that most of the Labour Government’s social reform agenda had, by and large, been agreed during the wide-ranging discussions which had taken place over the two and a half years after the publication of the Beveridge Report in December 1942. Though some talked of the next “swing of the electoral pendulum” as the solution for the Party’s dilemma, in the belief that all that was required was to wait for the Government to get itself into trouble and become unpopular, others felt that unless the Party could present a more progressive set of policies, the pendulum might swing even further to the left at the next election. At the 1946 Conservative Party Conference at Blackpool there was, according to Aubrey Jones, “much facile revolt and…aimless candour, a cry that the Party should march somewhere, though few could suggest where.”454 Implementation of the Beveridge Report’s social security recommendations necessitated several major pieces of legislation. Following the Family Allowances Act which had been passed by the Coalition in 1945, the first measure to be passed under the Labour Government was the 1946 National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act, followed in 1948 by the linked National Assistance Act. Both were designed to consolidate and supplement earlier piecemeal steps towards state insurance, and were overseen by a Minister for National Insurance, James Griffiths. The other significant component of the welfare state package was the 1946 National Health Service Act, which was managed through Parliament by Aneurin Bevan, Minister of Health, and came into effect in 1948. How, then, did the Conservative Party organise itself to deal with this blitz of legislation? As we have seen, the Conservative element in the Coalition had been ambivalent and even unenthusiastic about some aspects of the Beveridge Report. This attitude had made Jim Griffiths, Labour’s acknowledged expert on social insurance, determined to see it implemented as soon as possible. His experience in Welsh mining had left him particularly aware of the inadequacies of the provision made for compensating the victims of 453

Astor, “The Conservative Party in Opposition”, 346; Hoffman, The Conservative Party in Opposition, 28. 454 Quoted in Hoffman, The Conservative Party in Opposition, 141.

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industrial injuries. The consolidated scheme, therefore, which he laid before the House of Commons in February 1946, provided for insurance against sickness, unemployment, and old age, on a clear principle of universality. The sickness and unemployment schemes also provided benefits for wives, adult dependants, and children of the beneficiary. Provision was also made for maternity and widows’ benefits. Old age pensions were to be raised to what was considered to be the current subsistence level.455 According to Griffiths, the Bill reflected the “National Minimum Standard” principle, long advocated by campaigners such as Beatrice and Sidney Webb. Most importantly, it would be administered by the state, rather than through Friendly Societies. The package turned the core of the Beveridge Report into reality, introducing insurance systems “from the cradle to the grave”, based on flat rate benefits in return for flat rate contributions paid by employers, employees, and the general taxpayer.456 In his opening speech for the Opposition, Butler was somewhat negative and carping, yet the Bill was given unopposed second and third readings. Little was made of the much-diminished role of the Friendly Societies, whose days had effectively been numbered since the National Insurance Act of 1911. The progressive contributory principle, the necessary financial basis of social insurance, was accepted as an inevitable replacement for the “dole.” The only substantive criticisms came from Labour dissidents who objected to the various ways in which benefits were limited by qualification requirements, and also to lower benefit rates than they had expected. Griffiths placated them by minor amendments and improvements. Butler tried to make amends for his earlier critical tone by placing on record that his Party had “deliberately hastened rather than delayed the passage of this Measure.”457 The Act, which closely mirrored the proposals developed during the war, and which is regarded as the cornerstone of Labour’s welfare reform programme, received Royal Assent on 1 August 1946 and came into effect in 1948, the year in which the National Assistance Act was passed. Introduced by Aneurin Bevan, it dealt the final blow to the old Poor Law, and completed the all-encompassing nature of Labour’s overall insurance plan in providing basic social security cover for all Britons, particularly those who did not pay National Insurance contributions. A couple with no personal resources, for example, and whose

455

Kenneth O. Morgan, Labour in Power 1945–51 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984) 170–71. 456 Timmins, The Five Giants, 134–35. 457 Hansard, HC Deb, 30 May 1946, 5th ser. vol. 423, col. 1381, quoted in Hoffman, The Conservative Party in Opposition, 235.

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unavoidable living expenses went beyond their pension entitlement, could claim a supplement from the National Assistance Board.458 The most contentious piece of Beveridge-related legislation to come up in the first session of the 1945 Parliament was undoubtedly the National Health Service Bill. The Conservatives appear to have had no coherent political alternative to the Bill, and they were left seemingly opposing the measure simply for the sake of so doing. Indeed, they went further and allowed themselves to become the reactionary mouthpiece for vested interests who opposed the Bill, and to be seen as such by others. As Kenneth Morgan observes, “[t]he National Health Service [legislation] is a prime exhibit in illustrating the danger of making too much of the continuity between the social consensus of the war years and the post-war Labour welfare state.”459 Indeed, there was still apparently no settled Conservative policy on the NHS, even after the Act had come into operation. Forwarding to Ralph Assheton a draft policy statement on health in December 1948, Iain Macleod, a CRD researcher at the time, wrote that “a great deal of work is still to be done before we have any sort of clear-cut policy.” According to John Ramsden, “Macleod was reluctant to engage in the popular Conservative pastime of spotting flaws in the Health Service, arguing that it was essential to give it time to settle down and that Conservatives should make sure they had a policy of their own before criticising that of the Government.”460 In overall terms, the Conservative approach was still what it had been since Beveridge: progress in the social field would be achieved not by subordinating the individual to the authority of the state, but by freeing people from the curses of insecurity and poverty. In relation to the NHS, however, this meant it being seen as supporting a “provision of last resort for those who could not afford better”; it should not be seen as replacing private health schemes where there was a demand.461 The Opposition presented substantive amendments at the committee and report stages. These took the form of protests that too much power was being taken away from local authorities and passed to the Ministry of Health, even though hospitals were, in practice, to be administered by regional authorities, and GP services by executive councils. Few of these amendments, however, produced anything more than minor concessions as the Bill was debated. Although the Conservative Party divided the House against the Bill’s third reading on 26 July, only 113 Tories supported the Party line, as there was a general feeling that it would 458

Morgan, Labour in Power, 173–74. Morgan, Labour in Power, 154. 460 Ramsden, Making Conservative Party Policy, 124. 461 Clark, The Tories, 244. 459

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be either politically naive or unconscionable to ignore the acknowledged popularity of the measure in the country.462 One commentator has written that when contrasted with the Party’s positions taken in the negotiations conducted on the Coalition’s White Paper, the reasoned amendments sounded as though the Party was reverting to 1911–12.463 The most vehement opposition to the legislation came (as it had to the Coalition’s Willink proposals) from the British Medical Association, which threatened not to co-operate in implementing the legislation if it was passed. Their concern was that doctors would be banned from selling their services, and would become fully-fledged government employees, which they considered an assault on their freedom and their professional standing. In a letter to the British Medical Journal, a former BMA General Secretary said that the proposed health service looked like “the first step…towards National Socialism as practised in Germany” and likened Bevan, the Minister for Health, to a “medical Führer”, an extreme taunt so shortly after the war against Hitler. As late as January 1948, only six months before the Service was due to come into operation, a BMA ballot showed that 90 per cent of doctors still opposed its introduction, not least because of a strong aversion to becoming employees of the state. Bevan, confident that he had a democratic mandate, threatened to cut doctors’ capitation fees—the payment they received for each insured patient they treated. But he was also a realist in what proved a bitter battle with the profession and, as he infamously boasted later, ultimately he accomplished his goal “by stuffing the doctors’ mouths with gold”. He won over the consultants with financial inducements and the right to work in the NHS while retaining their lucrative private practices, and then used them to persuade the main opposition group—general practitioners—to co-operate. Bevan himself conceded that GPs would retain the right to run their practices, offering services to the NHS as independent contractors, with remuneration calculated on the basis of the number of NHS patients they had on their lists. After another ballot produced a significant increase in general practitioner support for the Bill, the BMA withdrew its formal 462

Even in the Cabinet, however, there was some resistance to the “centralisation of power.” In a Cabinet discussion on 20 December, for example, Herbert Morrison led the resistance of those who, with a view to encouraging civic pride, sought to preserve voluntary and municipal hospitals under local rather than national control. He was concerned that there would be a large transfer of financial liability from the ratepayer to the taxpayer. But the great majority of the Cabinet strongly backed Bevan. 463 John S. Saloma, Ominous Politics: The New Conservative Labyrinth (New York: Hill and Wang, 1984), 418.

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opposition in April 1948, and the Service was launched, as planned, on 5 July.464 Shortly afterwards, Bevan announced that 93.1 per cent of the population had been enrolled in the NHS. Its successful introduction had been a vital trial of strength for Attlee’s Government, bringing it worldwide admiration—it was almost certainly Bevan’s finest hour in politics.465 His overall philosophical and political attachment to the cause of the NHS is perhaps best captured by the leaflet, The New National Health Service, sent throughout the country: It will provide you with all medical, dental and nursing care. Everyone— rich or poor, man, woman or child—can use it or any part of it. There are no charges, except for a few special items. There are no insurance qualifications. But it is not a charity. You are all paying for it, mainly as taxpayers, and it will relieve your money worries in time of illness.466

On the other hand, the problems surrounding the funding of the Service and the associated pharmaceutical costs, which had been seriously underestimated, made him unpopular with colleagues. Already suffering from the austerity policies of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Stafford Cripps, they were now faced with severe cuts in the funding of their Departments. The recurring question of prescription charges was eventually to lead to Bevan’s resignation from the Cabinet when they were imposed by Chancellor Hugh Gaitskell in 1951, causing, as some have suggested, long-term damage to the image of the Labour Party. Legislative measures apart, the other major Beveridge issue, as developed in the subsequent 1944 White Paper, was how to achieve full employment, the yardstick for which was by then generally accepted as an unemployment rate of less than 8.5 per cent. Beveridge had included ‘Idleness’ among his five evil giants, and saw unemployment as a contributory cause of all the rest. The pivotal requirement of reconstruction was therefore to find remedies for the scale of unemployment seen in the 1930s.While the White Paper on Employment Policy has been regarded by many as the high-water mark of Coalition consensus, it also represented the maximum threshold of consensus.467 The question therefore for the Conservatives was how as an Opposition they were going to hold the

464

Renwick, Bread For All, 255–56. Hansard, HC Deb, 4 November 1948, 5th ser. vol. 457, col. 1020. 466 Webster, The National Health Service, 24. 467 Jefferys, The Churchill Coalition, 170–71. 465

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Government to account, and, at the same time, indicate a policy position which would appeal to voters at the next election. Keith Middlemas offers an apt description of the compromise package embraced by the White Paper: To sustain general demand for labour, the banking and financial system should encourage or discourage capital construction and raise or lower interest rates depending on the stage of the business cycle. Government spending…would follow suit, while fiscal controls on consumption—hire purchase restrictions, indirect tax rates and social security insurance— would be varied accordingly, through the budget. Deficits would be legitimate in depressed years as would government borrowing for physical reconstruction. Government would avoid deflation but not a moderate rise in prices and money incomes…Wage stabilisation would give protection against inflation and cost-induced unemployment.468

Such a formulation allowed Labour leaders to regard the White Paper as a significant advance on pre-war orthodoxies, and Conservatives to believe that it betokened no major departure from existing policies. What compromise also meant, of course, was a willingness and ability on the part of British industry, banks, and the trade unions to set aside the pursuit of sectional interests for the greater public good. The rewards for trade unions were only achievable through the abandonment of restrictive practices and the acceptance of wage restraint. The 1945 Conservative manifesto, while accepting “the maintenance of a high and stable level of employment” as a key objective, also said that “individual liberty to choose one’s job” was dependent on “free enterprise [being] given the chance and encouragement to plan ahead.” It also stressed the need for “mutual co-operation between industry and the State, rather than control by the State.”469 In the event, such differences in approach seemed to have little significance in the immediate post-war years, when tight domestic labour markets and world-wide economic expansion looked likely to be the order of the day for the foreseeable future. What made the difference, to some degree at least, was the policy adopted by George Isaacs, Minster of Labour, in applying the wartime system of manpower budgets to peacetime requirements, despite the enormous and conflicting pressures he encountered from the Board of Trade and other Departments anxious to see key workers such as miners demobilised as quickly as possible, and the Foreign Office’s need to keep sufficient troops in service. 468

K. Middlemas, Power, Competition and the State, Vol. 1: Britain in Search of Balance 1940–61 (London: Macmillan, 1986), 87–88. 469 “Winston Churchill’s Declaration of Policy to the Electors”.

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Despite Isaacs’ best efforts and his anxiety to avoid all-out direction of labour, an acceleration of labour shortages was inevitable, especially in the skilled trades and in the coal mines. The result was a loss of production capacity. Indeed, in 1946, the prized social objective of full employment came under strain, and there were worrying signs that the scourge of unemployment was threatening to return. This was particularly the case in some of the older industrial areas such as South Wales and Scotland. This process reached its nadir in February 1947, when the combination of a severe winter and a fuel crisis caused unemployment to reach alarming levels, and three-day working weeks became widespread. The fuel crisis passed, however, and over the following three years British industry entered a period of rapid expansion as a result of high levels of employment, and because Germany and Japan were still not competitive on the global market. It has also been suggested that the transition away from Hugh Dalton’s policy of “planned development”, to Stafford Cripps’s adoption of Keynesian demand management, had a marked effect on employment levels. This policy shift was assisted by the use of industrial development certification to force firms into setting up new plant in designated development areas, rather than in the over-developed south-east or Midlands. Cripps’s embrace of demand management was, of course, beneficial to the Conservatives when they came to present their policies for the 1950 election, since individual freedom within a communal framework has always been a standard Tory position. In Kenneth Morgan’s view, without the “massive” achievement of high levels of unemployment by all these means between 1947 and 1951, “the welfare state would have been invalidated from the start.”470 Despite their failure to mount an effective opposition to the NHS Bill in 1946, the Party’s overall stance in Opposition reflected Churchill’s preference to stick to simple criticisms, and not to give hostages to fortune. This approach, which was seen not without qualms in some quarters, allowed the Conservatives to play for time until the gloss should wear off the Government’s authoritarian approach, and its lack of concern for individual freedom become a worry for voters. At the same time, as Ball notes, the Conservatives could tolerate greater state interference “if it entailed neither the crushing of private enterprise nor too much redistribution of wealth.”471 Though there would be no extensions of state power under a Conservative Government, it was accepted that there would be a wider role for the state in the post-war world. It was not necessary to dismantle the 470 471

Morgan, Labour in Power, 180–84. Ball, The Conservative Party Since 1945, 112.

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welfare system—as Butler put it, the Conservatives had supported its main components in Parliament. Keynesian methods of economic management would ensure stable employment and, crucially, good industrial relations. “Playing for time” in purely oppositional terms did not, of course, mean that the Conservatives were unaware of the need to reformulate their own policies, in order to convince themselves that they were on the road to recovery. Neither were they oblivious of the need to persuade those who had abandoned them at the 1945 election that they were not indifferent to the demands of a changed post-war world. They had to be in a position, by the time the Attlee Government had run its course, to present voters with a compelling and distinct Conservative identity. That they took this seriously is borne out by the need which spurred the production of the Industrial and Agricultural Charters and, later, of The Right Road for Britain. As well as these major exercises, however, there were other initiatives aimed at stimulating renewed enthusiasm for Conservatism at the grass-roots level. At the heart of this was the activity of the Conservative Political Centre (CPC), established by Butler in December 1945. The Centre published pamphlets and leaflets; more importantly, it launched what was called the “Two-Way Movement of Ideas”, setting topics for local branch discussion with responses fed back up to the Centre. It was not a search for new policies—rather, it was a means of gaining acceptance for policies conceived at the centre of the Party, and of stilling dissenting voices. The launching of the CPC was not Butler’s only involvement in reshaping the future policy-making capability of the Party. His wartime platform, the Post-War Problems Central Committee (PWPCC) was reinvented as the Advisory Committee on Policy and Political Education (ACPPE) and, as we have already noted, he oversaw the revival of the Conservative Research Department (CRD), with a new staff of future Conservative illuminati. All this points to Butler’s crucial role in preparing the Party with a set of policies which would not only enable it to regain power in 1951, but shape its approach to economic and social affairs for many years thereafter. In this respect, Butler’s efforts were greatly assisted by the activities and thinking of the Tory Reform Committee, which was supported by around one-fifth of the parliamentary party and whose October 1945 manifesto, Forward—by the Right, had struck a new progressive note that was reflected in due course in the Industrial Charter. Butler, supported by Eden and Macmillan, among others, was to a large extent pushing at an open door in his crusade to modernise the Party’s policy stance. All that was

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missing was a committed and unequivocal lead from the top, the reasons for which have been covered above.472 Before the war ended, Butler, like Churchill, had been in favour of prolonging the life of the Coalition in both national and Party interests, “at least until Japan had been defeated and preferably until the social reforms upon which we [in the Coalition] were in general agreement had been passed”.473 Butler was convinced that the output from the PWPCC was still “inadequate as the basis for a Party appeal”, and had not been effectively disseminated throughout the Party organisation, which he knew to be in “a parlous condition.”474 In other words, he believed that the Conservatives were not prepared for an election in 1945 and that if one were to be held (for whatever reason), it would be disastrous for the Party. He recognised that the electorate wanted to see everything turned upside down, which the Labour Party in effect was promising to do. This was alien to Conservatism generally, and in particular to the type of Conservatism in which he believed. Butler thought that “progress could best be achieved by the careful fitting of different points of view into an agreed plan rather than by turning everything upside down.”475 On domestic topics, he expressed his preference as being “to wield a pruning knife rather than an axe.”476 Given his experience on the Coalition Committee that had worked on the Beveridge plans, he acknowledged that he had found leading for the Opposition on the Insurance Bill to be a “rewarding experience”. He described it as a process of “aligning the Conservative Party with the more positive secular trends of the post-war period…such as the creation of a Welfare State.”477 The task of revitalising the Party’s creaking local organisation fell to Lord Woolton, who had been the wartime Minister of Food. He did not, however, as Wilfred Fienburgh put it, “[strip] the political machine down to its ball-bearings and rebuild it as a New Model”, since the structure of the Party in October 1951 was little different from what it had been in 1945. But he did breathe new life and a new spirit into it. Woolton had joined the Party on the day of the defeat of the National Government, convinced that the election of a Labour Government would mean economic disaster for the country and for personal liberty. A year later, on 1 July 1946, he was appointed Chairman of the Party and became head of Central Office in

472

Ball, The Conservative Party, 110–11. Butler, The Art of the Possible, 128–29. 474 Butler, The Art of the Possible, 129. 475 Butler, The Art of the Possible, 131. 476 Butler, The Art of the Possible, 133. 477 Butler, The Art of the Possible, 133. 473

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September. He was shocked by what he found as he took up his new responsibilities. At the 1946 Conservative Party Conference, Woolton emphasised the importance of fighting local government elections on a party basis, not only to loosen Labour’s bureaucratic control of local councils, but also to assist in compiling registers of Party sympathisers for use in general elections. He also called for a broadening of class representation of Conservative candidates at all levels. As it happens, this was already being reflected in the 1945 intake of MPs, since many of those who had served since 1935 had retired. At the same Conference, Churchill had called not only for increases in membership, but for increased Party funding. The two deficiencies were, of course, linked. The more that membership could be increased, the more that subscriptions would be forthcoming. Woolton’s response to this, at the following year’s conference, was to set the Party the ambitious target of raising £1 million, an initiative which was subsequently matched by a parallel drive to recruit a similar number of new members. The financial target was met, ahead of schedule, in March 1948. At the same time, in 1949, strict limits were set on the level of payments which candidates or MPs could make to their constituency parties, thus enabling candidates to be selected on merit rather than wealth. Of equal success was the launch of a new youth wing, the Young Conservatives, which had 2,375 local branches by the end of 1949. Butler and Woolton did not see eye to eye, and, as has been noted above, Butler was dismayed by Woolton’s criticisms of The Right Road for Britain. Presumably Butler was annoyed at Woolton exceeding his organisational/management brief and dabbling in policy-making, which Butler regarded as his fiefdom. Against a “background of some tension”, as Butler himself put it, he wrote what he called “a constructive memorandum” to Woolton, in which he complained that Central Office—of which Woolton had oversight—had not sufficiently promoted the publication of The Right Road for Britain.478 Nevertheless, in the assessment of A.J. Davies: the drastic overhaul of the Party was left, in large part, to two men [Woolton and Butler] who, although personally antipathetic to each other, instituted the sweeping changes which were required…Woolton’s contribution as chairman of the Party was to reorganise its administration. He placed it on a sound financial basis…Butler was largely responsible for the intellectual transformation of the Party…[he was] adamant that the Party should be seen as a national organisation concerned for the welfare of all…the effectiveness of [this] response [was] shown by the fact that whereas

478

Butler, The Art of the Possible, 152.

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Chapter Seven crushing election defeats in the 1840s and 1906 [had] led to years out of power, by 1951 the Conservative Party was safely back in office.479

Before moving on to conclusions, however, about the nature of the Conservative Party’s commitment to the Welfare State as it had emerged by the end of the 1940s, it is important to consider not only how office was regained in 1951, but how and why it was not regained at the 1950 General Election, when the Butler/Woolton initiatives were put to the test for the first time. The dominant retrospective opinion holds that the results of both the 1950 and 1951 elections were almost certainly determined as much or even more by the physical and ideological exhaustion of Labour, as by the positive appeal of what the Conservatives had to offer. Memories, however inaccurate, of the hardships of the interwar years under Conservative Governments had, by 1949, been overlaid to a large extent by more recent and vivid experiences of austerity. Although there was a mini-boom in early 1950, the outbreak of the Korean war in June of that year heralded the return of hard times; conscription and the re-engagement of British troops abroad; the looming risk of a third world war; the unnerving shadow of the atomic bomb; and, in the summer of 1951, a balance of payments crisis. It was hardly surprising therefore that, in Richard Crossman’s words, “the Attlee Government quietly expired in the arms of the Whitehall establishment, unable to find the energy and inspiration to do more than rely on the orthodox advice of its civil servants.”480 So why, given the efforts of Butler and others from 1947 onwards to shape new policies, did they not make a more pronounced impression on the electorate at an earlier stage? One view is that the alternatives they put before voters were simply not specific enough. The manifesto for the 1950 election, for example, spoke of the need to raise productivity and to eliminate waste, but failed to explain in any detail how these objectives might best be achieved: Britain can sell abroad, only if her goods are high in quality and competitive in price…Marshall Aid will end in 1952. From that time forth we must pay for all we buy from overseas or suffer the consequences in low standards of living and high unemployment…The time has come when controls must be reduced to the minimum necessary as the supply situation improves…

479

Davies, We, The Nation, 26–27. Alan Sked and Chris Cook, Post-War Britain: A Political History (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979), 109.

480

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Conservatives believe in enterprise…In order to lower taxes and the high cost of living we must cut down on Government expenditure.481

Much the same sentiments were still being expressed in 1951, with the Party continuing to claim credit for having won the war, playing on the ideological aspects of Labour’s approach and emphasising Governmental waste: We need a new Government not…cramped by doctrinal prejudices or inflamed by the passions of class warfare…Contrast our position today with what it was six years ago. Then all our foes had yielded…[Now] [o]ur finances have been brought into grave disorder…Devaluation was the offspring of wild, profuse expenditure, and the evils which we suffer today are the inevitable progeny of that wanton way of living.482

Allowing for the fact that manifestos tend to exaggerate differences between parties, the overall tone of the 1950 and 1951 Conservative manifestos suggests that the Party was less concerned with winning power than allowing Labour to lose it. This was demonstrated by Churchill’s insistence on sticking to broad, striking generalities in his election broadcasts: “The difference between our outlook and the Socialist outlook on life is the difference between the ladder and the queue. We are for the ladder. Let all try their best to climb. They are for the queue. Let each wait his place until his turn comes.”483 These generalisations were so persistent that even after the 1951 election had been won, The Economist still felt the need to warn the new Government that what was wanted were radical changes in policy, rather than “minor administrative adjustments.”484 That the Party had to rely on these perceived non-policies was not solely because of Churchill’s antipathy to detailed policy-making in Opposition, or because of the fear that too great a departure from the Coalition “settlement”, as he saw it, would alienate the electorate. Instead, and more fundamentally, there was no broad agreement within the Party on the way forward, despite all the work carried out by Butler and others. The Butler circle and the Tory Reform Committee had been trying to push the 481 “This

is the Road: The Conservative and Unionist Party’s Policy”, 1950 Conservative Party General Election Manifesto, accessed 6 December 2021: http://www.conservativemanifesto.com/1950/1950-conservative-manifesto.shtml 482 “1951 Conservative Party General Election Manifesto”, accessed 6 December 2021: http://www.conservativemanifesto.com/1951/1951-conservative-manifesto.shtml. 483 Churchill’s Radio Broadcast, 8 October 1951, quoted in Stuart Ball, ed., The Conservative Party since 1945 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 166–77. 484 The Economist, 3 November 1951.

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Party in the direction of what The Economist called “me-too[ism]— but a little less”, while the bulk of the Party was anxious to adopt a more vigorous anti-Socialist approach. The balance required was a fine one; since the election was won, it might be thought to have worked. The judgment of The Economist, however, seems nearer the mark: “For the present the Conservatives have been put into office with few commitments on detailed policy, the electorate [having] preferred them to Labour for a job of rescue and repair.” It is difficult to measure what debt Conservative thinking between 1945 and 1951 owed to the new formulations advanced by Hayek in The Road to Serfdom which had appeared in 1944. In late summer that year, a group of MPs saw Hayek’s ideas as a possible motif for the looming election and urged Churchill to establish a “fighting fund for freedom.”485 In fact, Hayek had dedicated his book to “socialists of all parties” and expressed his concern to Karl Popper that “his ideas had been taken up only by those on the Conservative side of politics.”486 Firm evidence that the Party openly embraced Hayek’s views would seriously undermine the stance of the “consensus” theorists, but this is hard to find other than in examples of the terminology used in manifestos and speeches. Yet it cannot be doubted that Churchill himself, together with his senior colleagues and most of the Party’s backbenchers, were instinctively in favour of Hayek’s liberal economic theory, and particularly his defence of the free market.487 Ralph Assheton, for example, “drew on Hayek to open up the case against economic interventionism and its relationship to totalitarianism.”488 In 1950, Richard Law (later Lord Coleraine) produced a pale reflection of The Road to Serfdom in his Return from Utopia which argued that economic expansion was not possible under a Government that destroyed incentives with controls and high levels of taxation: If ever it can be shown to be the case that competition and profit motive are evil, the most that you have done by banning them is to remove an evil: you have done nothing to promote good…Utopia is the worst of political organisations…In Utopia, if ever it could be realised…there would be no truth except the truth which is proclaimed by the state…there would be no

485

Cockett, Thinking the Unthinkable, 90. Jeremy Shearmur, “Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, and the British Conservatives,” Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Vol. 28, No. 3 (September 2006): 310. 487 Cockett, Thinking the Unthinkable, 61–62: “Many Conservatives, those who can be called ‘liberal Conservatives’, were thoroughly opposed to the increasing trend towards economic collectivism that the Beveridge Report [for example] embodied.” 488Ramsden, The Age of Churchill and Eden, 74. 486

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choice. There would be no virtue except obedience and no vice except individuality.489

The need to introduce clear incentives and rewards for productivity and innovation was a leitmotif of both the 1950 and 1951 Conservative manifestos. But for the Conservatives to spell out in unambiguous terms that they were embracing a Hayekian formula—which did not include promises of full employment, state-provided universal welfare, a degree of state ownership and redistribution of wealth—would have caused a ruinous split within the Party. In the event, their manifestos and other policy statements said little that had not been articulated at the time of the 1945 election. The electorate had chosen to believe (or had been led to believe by orchestrated Labour propaganda) that Conservative thinking had not moved on from the laissez-faire approach of the inter-war years. The fact was, however, that without wishing to be seen to be embracing socialist ideology and simply pursuing a policy of “me-too-ism” for a narrow electoral advantage, the Party had slowly and painfully adopted an unavoidable commitment to interventionism. This was largely the result of work produced by the CRD, and was particularly noticeable in the areas of welfare reforms, employment policy, and the mixed economy. Many had still expected the 1951 Conservative Government to reduce benefits, impose charges for services, and facilitate the involvement of the private sector. In fact, between 1951 and 1964, initially under the guidance of Iain Macleod as Minister of Health, it left the Welfare State largely intact. Throughout that whole period, expenditure on the Welfare State rose as a percentage of gross domestic product. That the Conservatives did not have to promote the changes in their attitude too overtly in 1951 was helped by the rundown of Labour in the face of a series of economic and foreign policy woes, internal divisions, and the loss through ill-health of a number of senior experienced figures, such as Bevin and Cripps. This did not, however, affect their outright opposition to such purely socialist innovations such as nationalisation.490 In 1946, Lord Salisbury adopted a careful approach, saying that “we want economic-democracy to balance political-democracy.” From this phrase came the expression “property-owning democracy”, which found its way into common political parlance after its deployment by Anthony Eden

489 490

Richard K. Law, Return from Utopia (London: Faber and Faber, 1950), 190–91. Gourvish and O’Day, eds., Britain Since 1945.

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in a celebrated speech to the 1946 Conservative Party Conference.491 During the years under examination, “property-owning democracy” served as an electorally acceptable euphemism for the unacceptable phrase “free-market capitalism.”492 It would take a quarter of a century before the Party—but with its greater concern for holding power than expressing a particular ideology—openly acknowledged its adoption of Hayekism transmuted into Thatcherism. Even then, it was not accomplished without internal strife, and proved possible only because the demise of one dominant ideology, Socialism, left room for another. Although it was never explicitly acknowledged and communicated to the electorate, the fact remains that by the time of the 1951 election, the Conservative Party accepted the need for change to reflect changed circumstances in the country and embraced it with its usual degree of circumspection. Without blazoning its change of direction abroad, it had come to accept the cornerstones of the Welfare State as set in place between 1945 and 1950, and even incorporated principles such as the universality of benefit provision which had previously been anathema to the Party. The Conservatives also accepted the Keynesian approach to the achievement and maintenance of full employment. Any discomfort they may have felt at these developments could be allayed, not without justification, by the claim that they were only re-inheriting the policies they had approved in 1944.

491

Ben Jackson, “Revisionism Reconsidered: ‘Property-owning Democracy’ and Egalitarian Strategy in post-war Britain”, Twentieth Century British History 16/4 (2005): 419. 492 Papers of Lord Clitheroe, private possession, MS Clith. 14 May 1946; Salisbury to Assheton, quoted in Jones, “A Bloodless Counter-Revolution”, 11.

CHAPTER EIGHT CHURCHILL

Before assessing the significance of those who made the principal contributions to Conservative social reform policy in the first half of the twentieth century, it is important to tackle the intriguing question of Winston Churchill’s contribution to the process—as a Conservative. Taking his career as a whole, he was clearly not a social reformer by deep, natural instinct like Butler or Macmillan. Although, in collaboration with David Lloyd George, he played a key role in promoting the social legislation introduced by the 1906 Liberal Government—the “People’s Magna Carta”, as many came to call it—he had not crossed the floor of the House from the Conservatives to the Liberals so that he might be closely involved in the preparation and development of those measures. Instead, he did so primarily because of his disagreements with the Conservative Party over tariff reform. It is true that by late 1901, his attention had been drawn to Seebohm Rowntree’s revelation of the appalling squalor and poverty in which the inhabitants of the slums of York—and by extrapolation, a large proportion of the entire population—were forced to live.493 But in an unpublished review of Rowntree’s book, rather than placing his emphasis firmly on the unacceptably demeaning nature of the everyday lives of large numbers of people, the main point Churchill made was how harmful this was to Army and Navy recruitment, and the country’s ability to sustain its imperial role and reputation. Churchill’s attitude towards both the recommendations of the Beveridge report and Labour’s implementation of them after 1945 make it difficult to avoid the conclusion that he saw social deprivation more in terms of its deleterious effect on the wider national condition, rather than as something undesirable per se. Throughout his entire political career, Churchill was, of course, fiercely motivated by the need to protect the country from Socialism which would, as he saw it, have incorporated acceptable welfare systems in an evil and unacceptable totalitarian regime. In a speech in October1951, he likened the Labour approach to welfare as 493

R. Jenkins, Churchill (London: MacMillan, 2001), 80-81 and 85

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“a socialist queue”, whereas the nature of the provision made by his own Party represented “the Conservative ladder.” When asked what would happen if people fell off the ladder, he replied that “we shall have a good net and the finest social ambulance service in the world.” Churchill’s distinction between a system that recognised and tackled general need, and a system that provided rescue only as a last resort, was marked. This further supports the view that his commitment to welfarism was governed more by politics than by compassion. In terms of translating the parties’ approaches into practical measures, Labour’s policy, as Churchill saw it, was to provide for an average level of universal benefits—not differentiating between different degrees of hardship and dependency—at whatever the cost and whatever the impact on other programmes. For Labour, it was a case of help first, wealth creation second. The Conservative policy was to abjure universality, and to spend available resources only on those in the most desperate and provable need. Affordability meant that help could be provided only if sufficient wealth was being created. Economic policy could not be separated from welfare policy. For the Conservatives, it was a case of wealth creation first, help second. When he was first elected to Parliament in 1900, Churchill saw himself, like his father, as an advocate—nominally at least—of Tory Democracy. This had been born, as Iain Macleod described it, when in a speech in Manchester in April 1872 Disraeli substituted an ‘s’ for a ‘v’ in a Latin text from the Bible—“sanitas sanitatum, omnia sanitas” rather than “vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas”—to stress health and hygiene rather than vanity.494 According to Lord Randolph Churchill, this “shadowed forth…a social revolution” that embraced “Lord Salisbury’s plans for the amelioration of the poor.” Yet Tory Democracy or, as it soon came to be called, “patrician Conservatism”, was “‘an elastic concept amenable to a variety of interpretations. It appealed to political adventurers as well as to genuine social reformers” (raising the question of which category to assign Churchill to).495 So too “like old-style paternalism, [it] featured at least as much in internal Party disputes as in the ideological warfare between Conservatives and their opponents.” In the early years of the twentieth century, Tory Democracy was used “to urge a progressive yet pragmatic Conservatism”, since it was recognised that social amelioration could not

494

In 1875, Disraeli’s Government passed the first Public Health Act and between 1876 and 1904 Conservative Governments passed other measures to improve the health and welfare of the British people. 495 Robert Eccleshall, English Conservatism Since the Restoration: An Introduction and Anthology (London: Unwin, 1990), 118.

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be brought about without “private and public thrift”, that is, wealth creation.496 Churchill’s relationship with the Conservative Party deteriorated during his writing of the biography of his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, who had left the Party in circumstances of extreme bitterness for reasons which increasingly resonated with his son. Matters came to a head over Balfour’s handling of Joseph Chamberlain’s advocacy of tariff reform.497 Churchill did not want to see the lobbies of the House of Commons crowded with “the touts of protected industries.” Making the working classes pay more for food was anathema to liberal Tories and led Churchill, as a free trader, to advocate the creation of a central coalition of Tories and Liberals. As we saw in a previous chapter, it would not be straining matters to call him a natural coalitionist. Much later, Churchill expressed the depth of his dissatisfaction with his Party in broader terms, referring to his antipathy to its harsh treatment of the defeated Boers, Army reform, and its exploitation of its 1900 electoral victory. By the time the protection issue arose, therefore, he was already disposed to view all their actions in the most critical light. Given the divided state of the Conservatives over tariff reform and his general disillusion with the Party on other grounds, Churchill was convinced that the next election would result in a Liberal landslide. He thus drafted a letter, which was never sent, to his friend Lord Hugh Cecil, in which he wrote that he was “an English liberal” and that he “hate[d] the Tory Party, their men, their words and their methods…[and felt] no sort of sympathy with them.”498 After his continuing anti-protection, antiGovernment rhetoric had led to a vote of no confidence in him by his Oldham constituency party and his adoption, with Liberal support, as a Free 496

Eccleshall, English Conservatism, 119. “‘Tariff reform’ was the name given to the proposals...to erect a tariff barrier around the whole British Empire...Since the early nineteenth century Britain had systematically...reduced all of its tariff barriers, most famously with the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 in order to enact Free Trade...Belief in Free Trade became the backbone of nineteenth century British Liberalism and of the Liberal Party and was also accepted...reluctantly by the Conservatives...Free Trade remained unchallenged until the [late nineteenth century] when, [amongst other things] high tariff walls erected by Germany and America meant that German and American goods could be imported freely into Britain, while British goods had to pay a tariff to be allowed in to America or Germany, a tariff set at a rate which often effectively excluded them.” William D. Rubinstein, Churchill: The Contradictions of Greatness (Brighton: Edward Everett Root, 2020), 2–5. 498 Randolph S. Churchill, Winston S. Churchill, Vol II (London: Heineman, 1967), 71. 497

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Trade candidate by the Manchester North West constituency party, Churchill took the highly problematic decision to cross the floor of the House and take his place on the Liberal benches in May 1904. Since his first election he had attacked the Liberal Party with some vigour and there was no guarantee that they would accept him. In the 1900 election campaign, for instance, Churchill had described the Liberal Party as “prigs, prudes and faddists” and had declared that it was “hiding from the public view like a toad in a hole, but when it stands forth in all its hideousness the Tories will have to hew the filthy object limb from limb.”499 This was not language designed to endear him to prospective new colleagues. By 1903, however, he was directing his fire at his own Party, accusing Balfour of “gross, unpardonable ignorance”, and pillorying him for his “slipshod slapdash haphazard manner of doing business.” To remain in office, he claimed, “there is no principle which the Government are not prepared to betray and no quantity of dust and filth they are not prepared to eat.”500 By 1904, therefore, Churchill had grossly offended both parties, abandoned the traditions and instincts he had inherited from birth, and seemingly placed his entire political future at risk. As political commentator H.W. Lucy wrote, “he will always be handicapped by the aversion that always pertains to a man who, in whatsoever honourable circumstances, has turned his coat.”501 Some historians have speculated that it was his failure to be appointed to office in the Balfour Ministry, as much as opposition to tariff reform policy, which caused him to defect; he was, like his father, in a hurry. Yet it is certainly the case that his actions and speeches in 1901–2 had made him an uncongenial colleague, and aroused a great deal of hostility against him, particularly during the tariff reform debates. As his subsequent career demonstrated, however, Churchill always regarded party allegiance as essential “only in the sense that the horse is essential to the rider”, and his shifts of allegiance were never unconnected to his personal interests at any particular time. This lack of total commitment to any party accounted for his perennial predilection for what Asquith called “coalitions and odd regroupings.”502 499 Robert Rhodes James, Churchill: A Study In Failure, 1900–1939 (New York: The World Publishing Company, 1970), 23. 500 James, Churchill: Study in Failure, 23. 501 James, Churchill: Study in Failure, 23–24. 502 James, Churchill: Study in Failure, 35–36: “Churchill’s relationship with the Conservative party was destined to be stormy throughout his career. Between 1901 and 1904 he was a turbulent rebel within its ranks; for the next decade he was among its most vigorous opponents; in the Lloyd George coalition between 1917 and 1922 he was a colleague, but never viewed with enthusiasm by the Conservatives; in 1924

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What the Liberal Party recognised was that Churchill, though still not thirty, held the prospect of becoming a formidable parliamentarian, possessing both outstanding oratorical skills and an unusual degree of drive. This is why he was made Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Colonial Office, soon after joining the Liberal ranks. His elevation led to ten years of high achievement in various areas—successes that were unceremoniously ended by the 1915 Gallipoli fiasco. Churchill’s most significant achievements in office during that period came after he was appointed as President of the Board of Trade in Herbert Asquith’s Government in 1908 (in succession to Lloyd George), with responsibility for industrial relations.503 At a time of major economic turndown, he became concerned about the way of life endured by the “leftout millions”, describing the Tories as the “party of the rich,…the lucky, the wealthy, the happy and the strong against the masses.” He expressed “in resounding speeches the moderate aims of the Liberals and made them sound like trumpet blasts against the Jericho walls of Conservatism and industrial neglect.” He could apply his “exuberance and political adroitness” to any cause, and “seemed never to realise that there was no Victoria Cross in politics.”504 Churchill’s concern for the “left-out millions” led him to promote the Trade Boards Bill in 1909, designed to establish minimum rates of pay and conditions in the “sweated” labour industries. It was, in a sense, a very Tory Democrat measure; it gave Government the power to fine employers who exploited their workers. Its preparation enabled him to establish a close working relationship with Chancellor of the Exchequer Lloyd George, who, with his different background, taught him much about the evils of poverty. As Lady Asquith was to observe, “[f]rom Lloyd George [Churchill]...was to learn the language of Radicalism.”505 For Lloyd George, as with Seebohm Rowntree, poverty was not a result of “drink or moral inferiority, as many in the nineteenth century had unthinkingly believed…but [due] to old age, sickness, the death of a bread-winner, or unemployment.”506 Together Lloyd he rejoined the Conservative party, but broke with the leadership in 1930 and henceforward until war broke out in 1939, he was once again a rebel.” 503 Of some pertinence to this study is the fact that “[o]ther posts had been considered for him by Asquith, including the Local Government Board, which Churchill had rejected, among other reasons, because of his ignorance of social legislation and domestic politics.” See James, Churchill: Study in Failure, 37. 504 Bruce, The Coming of the Welfare State, 148 and 149. 505 Lady Asquith, Winston Churchill As I Knew Him (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1995), 161. 506 Bruce, The Coming of the Welfare State, 149.

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George and Churchill would be recognised as the foremost social reformers of the era. A further early manifestation of Churchill’s new-found ardour and determination was the establishment of Labour Exchanges to enable unemployed workers to get in touch with potential employers. Presciently, he recruited William Beveridge to manage the system. This was followed by a Miners’ Accident Act and an Old Age Pensions Act and, in 1911, in cooperation with Lloyd George, a National Insurance Act. Were all these measures borne from true liberalising convictions, or were they a reflection of the fact that Churchill, wherever he found himself, felt the need to tackle whatever problems presented themselves? When Lord Salisbury challenged him over his defection from the Conservatives, Churchill conceded that he could simply have “stood aside”, but said that he wanted to fight with his whole heart and body. So “there it is”, he added. He never hid the fact that he saw the Liberal reforms as measures which would make Britain stronger, especially in the case of war. In a similar vein, he told an audience that the unprecedented wealth distribution inherent in Lloyd George’s 1909 taxraising budget—the People’s Budget—was insurance against dangers at home, from Socialism, and abroad, from Germany. Both statements may credibly be seen as revealing Churchill’s true sense of priorities. According to Robert Rhodes James, “Churchill could never do his abilities justice unless he excited about a matter and he quickly invested his work at the Board of Trade with a dramatic and romantic quality.” This “air of drama”, however, “aroused a certain skepticism about his motives among men who had been long concerned with the social policies that Churchill now so fervently espoused.”507 What has to be said about his achievements at the Board of Trade, is that there was never any serious attempt on Churchill’s part to challenge the existing structure of society. His concern was to preserve it, but make it more effective. As Charles Masterman wrote, “[h]e desired in England a state of things where a benign upper class dispensed benefits to an industrious bien pensant and grateful working class.”508 Many Liberals doubted his sincerity, and asked whether his only motivation was ambition. Beatrice Webb remarked on his “capacity for quick appreciation and rapid execution of new ideas, whilst hardly comprehending the philosophy beneath them.”509 Perhaps illustrative of this is that his social reform period effectively came to an end with his move to the Admiralty in 1914. Even 507

James, Churchill: Study in Failure, 38. James, Churchill: Study in Failure, 39. 509 Beatrice Webb, Our Partnership, 1858–1943 (London: Longmans, Green, 1948), 404. 508

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before this however, he had earned a reputation for being quite unable to resist dabbling in matters beyond his own Departmental sphere, a habit which led Grey to comment that “Winston very soon will become incapable, from sheer activity of mind, of being anything in a Cabinet but Prime Minister.”510 In the 1918 “Coupon” election, Liberals fought Liberals; Conservatives joined with Liberals and fought Liberals; Labour fought everyone. Churchill stood successfully as a Coalition Liberal, but although the result was an emphatic endorsement of Lloyd George as the “man who won the War”, it was the Coalition Unionists under Bonar Law who held the upper hand in terms of numbers in the new House of Commons. For a brief period, it looked as though the idea of a Centre Party that had for so long attracted Lloyd George and Churchill might have materialised, but it was not to be and, though Churchill was a colleague, the Conservatives never viewed him with enthusiasm. Indeed, his relationship with the Conservative Party was destined, as it had begun, to be stormy throughout his career. Churchill became Secretary for War and Air in the new Government, but was not appointed to the Cabinet by Lloyd George until November 1919. He was made responsible for demobilisation, which presented a political challenge because of a prior decision to grant priority release to men on leave who could produce written offers of employment, thus handicapping men still under arms who had been in the service for longer periods. Churchill solved the problem by ordering that priority in discharge was to be based firmly on length of service. At the same time, in the face of obstruction from Army and Navy interests, he was pursuing a consuming interest in creating an effective Air Force. One of the more controversial issues arising during the “Coupon” Coalition period—perhaps the most contentious in terms of the disagreements it fomented—was whether Britain, after the defeat of Germany, should commit itself to increasing the numbers of its troops in Russia to support the anti-Bolshevik forces. During a gathering at the Mansion House in 1919, Churchill spoke harshly of “the foul baboonery of Bolshevism”, and described Lenin as the “monster crawling down from his pyramid of skulls.”511 He was thus eager to assist the struggle against it.512 But his 510

James, Churchill: Study in Failure, 45. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Vol. 4: World in Torment, 1916–1922, (London: Heinemann, 1975), 257. 512 One of Churchill’s most expansive statements on Bolshevism was made in a lengthy speech to the Aldwych Club Luncheon at the Connaught Rooms, London, on 11 April 1919. “The British nation”, he said, “is the foe of tyranny in every form. 511

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vehement proselytising in favour of intervention brought him into conflict with many senior colleagues, including Lloyd George, who were equally determined to avoid what would likely result in a major and costly prolonged commitment which they were convinced the country could not afford and would not tolerate. In the event, after some months, Churchill’s many and varied arguments for shorter or longer-term interventions were rejected. British forces were withdrawn from the Caucasus and Caspian areas in the south of Russia and from Archangel and Murmansk in the North, where they had been deployed during the war. The effect of the dispute was to place the relationship between Churchill and Lloyd George under severe strain, a condition not improved when Churchill wrote to the Prime Minister on 29 March 1920 that, “[s]ince the Armistice my policy would have been ‘peace with the German people, war on the Bolshevik tyranny.’ Willingly or unavoidably, you have followed something very near the reverse…I do not of course believe that any real harmony is possible between Bolshevism and present civilisation.”513 Lloyd George commented somewhat over-colourfully that Churchill “had no doubt a genuine distaste for Communism…His ducal blood revolted against the wholesale elimination of Grand Dukes in Russia.”514 Churchill’s antipathy towards Socialism, expressed in blunt fashion even during the welfare state debates after the Second World War, was, of course, a pale shadow of his loathing of Bolshevism. Even before the final decision for or against intervention had been taken, the Labour movement was expressing sharp opposition to the possibility of British support for the anti-Bolshevik cause, and much of its ire was directed against Churchill, who was verbally assaulted on a continuous basis by the newly-established Hands Off Russia Committee. This further entrenched the pattern of mistrust and suspicion of Churchill That is why we fought Kaiserism and that is why we would fight it again. That is why we are opposing Bolshevism. Of all tyrannies in history, the Bolshevist tyranny is the worst, the most destructive, and the most degrading...The miseries of the Russian people under the Bolshevists far surpass anything suffered even under the Tsar...Lenin and Trotsky had no sooner seized power...than they let loose on us and our Allies a whole deluge of German reinforcements which burst on us in March and April of last year. Every British and French soldier killed last year was really done to death by Lenin and Trotsky.” See James, ed., Winston Churchill: His Complete Speeches, Vol. III, 1914–1922 (New York: Chelsea House, 1974), 2771– 72. 513 Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis, Vol. IV: The Aftermath, 1918–1923 (London: Butterworth, 1929), 377. 514 David Lloyd George, Memoirs of the Peace Conference, Vol.1 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1939), 214.

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by Socialists that was to endure throughout his career. His response to initial criticism, in a speech on 3 January 1921, was that “[t]he theories of Lenin and Trotsky have driven man from the civilisation of the twentieth century into a condition of barbarism worse than the Stone Age.”515 He had already said in January 1920 that Labour was not fit for government, a theme to which he returned repeatedly in the years ahead. As the Russian debate drew to a close, Churchill became enmeshed in other crises, not the least being the question of whether the Irish Declaration of Independence, proclaimed in 1916, should be ratified. As Ireland slid into anarchy in 1920, he persuaded the Cabinet to authorise the use of troops—the hated Black and Tans—to control the excesses of the IRA. But when their ill-disciplined behaviour exacerbated tensions, even Churchill was forced to accept the need for a negotiated settlement. As Secretary of State for the Colonies, he subsequently had to defend this position in Parliament, in the face of vehement Conservative hostility. During this time, the relationship between Churchill and Lloyd George continued to deteriorate. It had never truly recovered from their differences over Russia, and suffered further damage over the terms of the Treaty of Sèvres, signed between the Allies of World War I and the Ottoman Empire in 1920. Lloyd George, who was pro-Greek, approved the terms of the Treaty, which effectively turned Turkey into a “neutral zone” by ceding Thrace to Greece, much to the humiliation of nationalist leader Kemal Ataturk, who was however admired by Churchill for his anti-Bolshevism. After being given new responsibility for oversight of Colonial Office affairs in January 1921, Churchill in March convened and chaired a conference in Cairo of senior British officials with the aim of reducing the cost to Britain of settling the aftermath of a rebellion in Iraq. The conference was also intended to address strife between Arabs and Jews in Palestine, policies described by Henry Wilson as “hot air, aeroplanes and Arabs.”516 Churchill himself believed he had skilfully reconciled the conflicting wartime assurances made by the British to the Arabs and the Jews. In a reshuffle after Austen Chamberlain had resigned as Chancellor, Churchill gave up the Air Ministry but remained in the Cabinet as Colonial Secretary. In December 1921, after long negotiations, the Treaty creating the Irish Free State with Dominion status was signed, but when it was rejected by Eamon de Valera, President of the Dáil, there followed a savage ten-month civil war. But the crisis that was finally to undermine the Coalition was what 515

Peter Viereck, Conservative Thinkers: From John Adams to Winston Churchill (New York: Routledge, 2017), 174. 516 Sir Charles Edward Callwell, Field-Marshall Sir Henry Wilson: His Life and Diaries, Vol. 2 (London: Cassell, 1927), 316.

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Churchill called “the vendetta against the Turks”, caused by Ataturk’s threatened action against Istanbul and Chanak. As with the case of the Irish Treaty, Churchill, being realistic, had to abandon his opposition to the Government’s policies as the situation developed. If all these crises were not enough of themselves, Conservative patience with the Government was badly affected by the scandal over the sale of honours for contributions to the Lloyd George Election Fund by the Prime Minister’s agent, Maundy Gregory. With their anger additionally aroused by high levels of unemployment, continuing austerity, and reduced war pensions, the Conservatives withdrew their support for the Coalition at the famous Carlton Club meeting on 19 October 1922, and decided to fight the next election as an independent party.517 When Lloyd George called an election for 15 November, the strong popular reaction against continuing unemployment and austerity saw Churchill’s vote drop dramatically and, while recovering from a serious illness, he lost his Dundee seat to a Prohibitionist. As he said later, “[i]n the twinkling of an eye, I found myself without an office, without a seat, without a party, and without an appendix.”518 What conclusions, then, can be drawn from this recital of Churchill’s activities during the life of the post-war Lloyd George Coalition after World War I? First of all, it seems to illustrate that party allegiance had little meaning for him in day to day terms. Not only was he continually at odds with his National Liberal Coalition colleagues, he was also opposed to many of the positions taken up by their Government partners, the Conservative Unionists, just as they were at odds with him over many issues, often caused by his shifts in position over policies such as the Irish Treaty and the Turkish crisis. Robert Rhodes James comments on his obsession with the immediate and his detestation of administration by way of explanation for his frequent changes of mind. Churchill either did not know how “to play politics” or simply refused to. What mattered to him were issues, and he was particularly attracted by the problems presented by international affairs. They, rather than social concerns, were his obvious bread and butter, though in terms of garnering political support he often spread his butter on the wrong side of the bread. He was involved at one time or another on the wrong side in what have been called “the two most lamentable of the actions of the Government—the Russian intervention and the handling of the Irish question” which might, added to the earlier Gallipoli disaster, have terminated the political career of a lesser man. But as events were to continue to prove, he was no ordinary man. Where he was 517 518

On the Carlton Club meeting, see the discussion in Chapter Two. James, Churchill: Study in Failure, 165.

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consistently unswerving was in his hatred of Bolshevism, an antipathy which was to inform and underpin many of his actions and pronouncements after the Second World War, and his strident and unrelenting opposition to Socialism, with which he had to come to terms under the Attlee post-war Labour Government. Churchill’s view of left-wing politics also had an effect during the years between his assumption of office again in 1924, after two years in the political wilderness, and his tenure of the Premiership after Neville Chamberlain’s resignation in 1940. As we have seen, Churchill had started his political career as a paternalist Tory Democrat, believing society should be allowed to develop organically rather through engineering. Tory Democracy was about the preservation of established institutions and traditional principles, combined with social and economic programmes designed to benefit the ordinary person. The wealthy and the healthy should seek to share their benefits with those less fortunate, whence came the notion of paternalism. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, however, as a result of economic and social developments and the growth of a selfmotivated and organised working class, Tory Democracy was giving way in Conservative thinking to a belief in free-market capitalism as the means to increase general wealth and well-being. Arguably, the nature of Churchill’s involvement in the social programmes of the 1906 Liberal Government represented an acceptance of this new state of affairs, and a rejection of paternalism. As the social strains arising from the operation of a free-market spawned the growth of a left-wing organised working class, however, alongside aggressive trade unionism, industrial unrest, and economic depression, the Conservative Party once again embraced an updated Tory Democracy. In an attempt to create national unity, the Party introduced wide-ranging social legislation. In retrospect, this can be understood as foreshadowing their acceptance of the post-war socialistmanaged creation of the Welfare State, and of Keynesian-based economic management. The pendulum was not to swing back towards the free market until the arrival of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister. It took Churchill three attempts before he was re-elected to Parliament. In Baldwin’s surprise 1923 general election, Churchill fought as a National Liberal Free Trader against a Socialist in Leicester West, and lost to the Labour candidate due to the lack of Protectionist Conservative support. He then stood as an Independent Anti-Socialist in the central London constituency of Westminster in March 1924. In his election address, he wrote, “I am a Liberal who wishes to work with the Conservative party in strong resistance to this menacing attack ‘by Socialism.”’ As part of his renewed rightward march, his campaign featured alarmist speeches on “The

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Socialist Peril” that prompted his Labour opponent, Fenner Brockway, to issue an election address. Brockway declared that: Mr Churchill has previously charged Labour with setting class against class. It is he who is now the chief exponent of a class war…[Mr Churchill’s] forte is to be a disturber of the peace, whether at home or abroad. He is a political adventurer, with a genius for acts of mischief…He is militant to his fingertips.519

Once again, Churchill was beaten, this time by the Conservative candidate, though the tenor of his campaigning regained him much Tory goodwill. When Baldwin subsequently renounced his pledge to introduce tariffs, he was adopted by the Epping Conservative Association to fight as a Constitutionalist and Anti-Socialist candidate in the general election called for October 1924. He won the seat (later renamed Wansted and Woodford) which he was to hold for the next forty years. Most significantly at the time, his victory brought him back into the Tory fold. In November 1924, Churchill was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer by Stanley Baldwin in the new Conservative Government. The intention was to detach him from Lloyd George, keeping him away from military and foreign affairs but harnessing his powerful Parliamentary influence for the Conservatives. The Party, particularly the Protectionist element, was dumfounded; indeed, Churchill himself was surprised, echoing the remark of Disraeli that “the vicissitudes of politics are inexhaustible.” Churchill came to the Treasury with little understanding of Government financing. The language of economists baffled him. Robert Boothby told Robert Rhodes James that if Churchill was talking to soldiers or generals he would understand what they were talking about but if they were economists they might as well have been talking Persian.520 Churchill inherited a desperate economic situation. Unemployment in the major industries was unacceptably high, production costs were soaring, and exports were shrinking, as the war had caused the loss of valuable markets to new competitors. Slump conditions were evident in many areas of the country. Despite opposition to the idea from Reginald McKenna (a former Chancellor) and John Maynard Keynes—and, indeed, reservations on the part of Churchill himself—the answer to the significant dislocation of international trading arrangements was thought to be a return

519

Quoted in Martin Gilbert, Plough My Own Furrow: The Story of Lord Allen of Huntwood as Told Through His Writings and Correspondence (London: Longmans, 1965), 176. 520 James, Churchill: Study in Failure, 174.

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to the Gold Standard. This was restored at its pre-war parity in Churchill’s first Budget, in 1925. Given the scale of the assets which had had to be sold to pay for the war, however, and given that exports could no longer produce the surplus necessary to buttress the country’s position as a world financier, the position thus created could not be sustained without a degree of severe economic stringency. Other Budget measures had not helped in this respect. Working with Neville Chamberlain, for example, Churchill used the Budget to reduce the average pension age from 70 to 65, to cut income tax, and to give relief to surtax payers. It also allowed widows’ pensions to become payable on their husbands’ death. Beyond that, it gave a subsidy to coal mines to stave off wage cuts. All these measures attracted criticism, most notably in a series of articles by Keynes in the Evening Standard, later published under the title of The Economic Consequences of Mr Churchill.521 Among its most drastic effects, the Budget seriously exacerbated the problems of the coal industry, and the coal-owners’ proposals to reduce wages and increase the working day led to the T.U.C-supported General Strike of 1926. Though he was anti-strike and earned obloquy by publishing the British Gazette during the strike, Churchill later acted as an intermediary between the two sides in the dispute, and supported the negotiation of a minimum wage. The reputation he earned during the strike, however, as the man who wanted to teach the unions a lesson, was never really forgotten by those on the political Left, and he was often referred to thereafter as his opponents’ most valuable propaganda asset. Perhaps of even greater significance for the future, however, Churchill met Mussolini in Rome in 1927 and praised his anti-Leninism. All in all, in the years of Churchill’s Chancellorship up to 1929, he acted in accordance with his claimed Tory Democracy principles. He was motivated to a high degree, however, by the perceived need to take measures to stave off the growing influence of the Left, particularly evident during the short-lived first MacDonald Government of 1924. Churchill retained his seat in the 1929 election, even though another Labour Government was returned. After advocating in vain for the formation of a Conservative Liberal Coalition, he became an ardent opponent of the Labour Government’s proposal to grant Dominion status to India. Baldwin’s support for the proposal led Churchill to resign from the Shadow Cabinet, and he subsequently failed to gain Ministerial office after the Conservatives’ landslide victory in the 1931 general election. Thereafter, until 1939, as well as writing extensively, he involved himself continuously 521

John M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of Mr. Churchill (London: L. and V. Woolf, 1925).

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in the affairs of India and, later, in fulminating against the Chamberlain Government’s appeasement of German fascism. He also opposed—again without success—the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936. During the entire period he was truly a lone voice in the wilderness; his warnings were not acknowledged until his appointment as First Lord of the Admiralty after war was declared in September 1939. These major international problems diverted the majority of attention from domestic affairs during most of the 1930s. Churchill’s appointment to the Admiralty was followed by his replacement of Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister in May 1940. The formation of a Coalition Government commanded his full attention, until the topic of post-war reconstruction came to the Coalition’s attention. It was, of course, the publication of the Beveridge Report at the end of 1942 which most focussed minds on post-war reconstruction. When it was launched, the work for which Beveridge had been given oversight was not expected to acquire anything like the importance it eventually gained. In the words of Peter Hennessy, “the document could so easily have offered all the excitement of a garden marrow rather than the striking bloom it turned out to be.”522 As Beveridge’s vision widened, however, in the course of taking evidence from such expert witnesses as Seebohm Rowntree and Eleanor Rathbone, Churchill became insistent that nothing should be off-limits, and that technical matters should only be considered when first principles had been established. This caused the Treasury and some Whitehall departments to become concerned that matters were getting out of hand, and led to Beveridge being told that the final report would be regarded as purely his own work. This restriction led Beveridge, in turn, to complain through the columns of The Times that the Government was insufficiently serious about post-war planning and reconstruction. At a War Cabinet meeting on 16 November, Brendan Bracken told colleagues that Beveridge appeared to be conducting a political campaign and was intending to brief lobby correspondents before publication. “Churchill appeared relatively emollient at first, merely responding [that] it [would be] a pity if such a comprehensive scheme failed to get a fair chance because of the propagandising of its author.” Later, however, he instructed that “the report is Government property [and that] Beveridge must be told [that] he is not to expound it before its launch in Parliament”. But when the Government was seen to be dragging its feet over publication, Penguin offered to step in, at which point 522

72.

Peter Hennessy, Never Again: Britain 1945–51 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1992),

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the Government ensured that the Stationery Office published the report in December 1942 and then arranged for it to be brought before Parliament. The Beveridge Report was given a mixed response. It was unanimously endorsed by the Liberal Party and by Liberal MPs in the Commons, and by many Labour constituency organisations and prominent left-wing intellectuals such as Laski, G.D.H. Cole, and Richard Tawney. There were, however, some reservations among the rank-and-file of the Labour Party about Beveridge’s emphasis on the contributory principle. And before the Commons debate, Churchill issued a warning note, acknowledging that the report “constituted an essential part of any post-war scheme of national betterment... but that a general election was required before any major changes could be implemented.” When Attlee objected, Churchill agreed “to legislation by this Parliament to prepare for post-war, but not to legislation taking decisions binding on the future.”523 Labour Cabinet Ministers supported Churchill’s line with varying degrees of reluctance. Attlee and Dalton welcomed the report, but were lukewarm in pressing for its implementation. Dalton feared that demand for its acceptance by impatient backbenchers might force Churchill to go to the country and produce a Tory landslide victory, which would lead to the eclipse of the parliamentary Labour movement for the foreseeable future.524 Beveridge’s only major critic on the left was Beatrice Webb, who told the London correspondent of Izvestia that it would be a political bomb that would hit the Tories and Liberals, who would want to return to the “status quo.” She later changed her viewpoint. After reading the report, she said that it would “increase catastrophic mass unemployment...[since] the better you treat the unemployed in the way of means without services, the worse the evil becomes, because it is better to do nothing than to work at low wages and conditions.”525 The most positive thing that can be said about Churchill’s attitude to the Beveridge Report was that his introduction of National Insurance and old age pensions with Lloyd George before the First World War enabled him to come to a reluctant accommodation with its recommendations—and, eventually, with the welfare state. Churchill’s reluctance to embrace a positive progressive mood was evident when he had told the Cabinet after El Alamein that the most painful struggle would still lie ahead, if they fell to quarrelling about what they should do with victory even before that 523

Hermiston, All Behind You, 238–9. José Harris, William Beveridge: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 425. 525 Passfield Papers – B. Webb’s Diary, 30 November 1942, Fabian Society Papers, Box 3. 524

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victory had been won. As we have already noted, at a more personal level he thought Beveridge “an awful windbag and a dreamer”, though Attlee, too, found him self-satisfied and prickly. After the public acclaim which the Report attracted on its publication, however, let alone the large measure of approval accorded to it by the Tory Reform Committee, Churchill realised that anything less than public support for it would be very damaging to the Conservatives. In a broader sense, he himself was sceptical, it has to be said, about the response the Report might receive in America. Would England’s allies believe that they were being asked to pay for social benefits which were more generous than they themselves were prepared to support? Having little choice in the matter, however, he broadcast in a reassuring tone to the nation in March 1943, speaking of the importance of providing national insurance for all the misfortunes of life “from the cradle to the grave.” What was noticeable, however was that he never mentioned Beveridge by name in the course of his address. While The Times designated the speech as a “proclamation of much vigour and sincerity...that may well mark an epoch in the social policy of this country, Lord Woolton thought that it was a foolish broadcast and its warnings about timing had effectively damped down the possibility of early action.”526 Nor did its cultivated positivity deter a faction of the Party from setting up the Progress Trust in November 1944, to oppose the move towards the provision of benefits on a universal basis, which Conservatives regarded as “back-door socialism.” Conservative social thinking had always favoured selectivity: what sense did it make to give money to people who were not in want? Chancellor Kingsley Wood had put this more formally in November 1942, when he had declared the Beveridge proposals unaffordable. To the members of the Progress Trust, Beveridge seemed to be the thin end of a very thick wedge. Many of them subsequently came to regard this viewpoint as justified by the manner in which the post-war Labour Government implemented Beveridge’s proposals. Since Churchill’s energies were almost solely devoted to masterminding the defeat of Germany, however, the Conservatives had not organised themselves sufficiently to advance a set of coherent and social alternatives. According to Robin Harris, the consequences of this were that the Party “slithered haltingly and unpersuasively towards collectivism but without gaining any [electoral] credit for it.”527 Before leaving to meet President Roosevelt in Casablanca in January 1943, Churchill had warned the Cabinet that in preparing for the Parliamentary discussion of the Report, 526 527

Hermiston, All Behind You, 244. Harris, The Conservatives, 165–67.

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scheduled for the following month, they should beware of raising “false hopes and airy visions of Utopia and El Dorado.”528 Attlee later wrote that the subject of post-war planning always made Churchill uneasy, and that whenever a Cabinet committee put papers to him on anything not military or naval, he was always inclined to suspect a socialist plot. On Beveridge specifically, he was prepared to accept that the Report’s recommendations would have a bearing on post-war reconstruction, though only after a general election. Churchill’s position was that they could not be implemented by the Coalition, since the Parliament elected in 1935 had had no mandate to make the changes now being mooted. Given his broadcast undertaking, however, and the ongoing (and sometimes acerbic) debate which could not be stilled without further action, work on turning the Beveridge proposals into legislative form produced a series of White Papers in 1944. Inter alia, these covered Social Security, a National Health Service, and Employment. Alongside these, the Butler Education Act and the Family Allowance Act were both brought into law, though many saw them as measures to enable the Government to avoid the more expensive and difficult alternatives of progressing the introduction of social security and health legislation. None of the recommendations in the White Papers—which at some critical points departed from what Butler had proposed—were, therefore, carried out before the 1945 election (see Chapter Four). When the newly-elected Labour government brought forward its legislative proposals for what in effect amounted to “full” Beveridge—to which the members of the Tory Reform Committee were broadly sympathetic—Churchill could thus claim that the positions in the White Papers, for which he took credit, was where he stood. As the Conservative manifesto for the 1945 election made clear, action to introduce a nationwide and compulsory social security scheme “would be based on the plan announced by the Government of all parties in 1944.”529 The same tone can be detected in the 1950 and 1951 manifestos. The 1950 manifesto accused the Socialists of spreading the “tale that social welfare was something to be had from the State free, gratis and for nothing.”530 The 1951 manifesto warned that “the production of new wealth must precede common wealth, otherwise there only will be common poverty.”531 In other words, the basic Conservative message that universality of benefits was unjustifiable, wasteful, and unaffordable remained unchanged during the lifetime of the 528

McKinstry, Attlee and Churchill, 340. “Winston Churchill’s Declaration of Policy to the Electors.” 530 “This is the Road: The Conservative and Unionist Party’s Policy.” 531 “1951 Conservative Party General Election Manifesto.” 529

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two post-war Labour Governments. This makes it surprising that despite the general expectation that the next Conservative Government would cut benefits, introduce more charges for services, or extend the role of private provision, expenditure on the welfare state after the Conservatives’ 1951 election victory actually continued to grow as a percentage of gross domestic product. Parliament’s ambivalent response to his recommendations convinced Beveridge that his views were being discredited by Government. That the report caught the public imagination under these circumstances, was, as José Harris claims: a matter partly of luck and partly of careful calculation. The report was published a few days after the battle of Alamein, which to many people seemed like a turning-point in the war; and Beveridge was fortunate in that his mingled tone of optimism, patriotism, high principle and pragmatism fitted the prevailing popular mood. It suited too the feeling of national solidarity that seems to have been engendered in all sections of the community by the…war.532

The pooling of resources and the sharing of risks were guiding principles that underpinned the war effort. They were also reflected in the overall tone of the Beveridge Report. Yet there is no evidence that Churchill paid more than cursory attention to the detailed work of the Beveridge Committee as it unfolded. Indeed, even after publication, he continued to distance himself from the report, and gave greater priority to collaboration with Labour in the context of the war. It was thus not until March 1943 that Churchill committed himself publicly to a comprehensive post-war extension of social policy—and when he did, it was without any specific mention of Beveridge. Chris Renwick argues that by failing to take ownership of Beveridge, Churchill yielded the advantage to Labour.533 Churchill appreciated Attlee’s loyalty to the Coalition Government, even though Attlee’s attitude irritated some of his fellow Labour Party members who were anxious to extract much more in the name of reconstruction. As Attlee told the country in a broadcast as late as January 1944, “In planning for the peace, the watchword of the Government [had to be] ‘First things first.’” It was necessary for plans to be thoroughly worked out before they could be implemented. Soon afterwards, however, as the fortunes of the war started to swing in Britain’s favour, Labour agitation mounted. When Butler’s Education Bill came before the House, there was

532 533

Harris, William Beveridge, 74. Renwick, Bread For All, 214–23 and 234–5.

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some suspicion that the Conservatives were trying to avoid wide-ranging and comprehensive reconstruction planning. Pressure grew steadily for full implementation of Beveridge, and in March 1944 Attlee accepted that Labour would have to leave the Coalition to pursue this aim when the war in Europe had been won. Churchill, as we have seen, wanted the life of the Coalition extended until Japan had also been defeated. But as Labour squabbling continue to deepen, Attlee himself threatened to resign if the Party did not give its full backing to the Education Bill. The threat worked and the Bill was passed, but Tribune presented Attlee’s desire to keep the Party united as a sign of weakness and ridiculed him as the “invisible man.” What Labour’s disarray reflected, however, was that “great structural and ideological shifts” were taking place beneath the surface of the Coalition, signifying a desire for progressive reform—a desire only too well illustrated by the massive sales of Beveridge’s report. (After his death, even Adolf Hitler was found to have had a translated copy of Beveridge, one of the thousands dropped on Germany as part of the Allies’ propaganda campaign). There is little doubt that Attlee was more attuned to this change in mood than Churchill. Indeed, in the autumn of 1944, Churchill began to complain that the Conservatives involved in the Reconstruction Committee, such as Butler, were consensus figures, “whereas Labour were using their dominance” to promote a party agenda. If both had given priority throughout the entire life of the Coalition to winning the war, Attlee’s growing realisation that new demands could not be ignored left him better placed to face the post-war future, than did Churchill’s failure to grasp the need for his Party to offer a sensibly modified Conservative alternative to Beveridge. Churchill appeared unable to comprehend that the unity he had created through the war years might not be transferable wholesale in pursuit of a peacetime victory under new leadership. The fact remains, however, that the spadework for what became the Welfare State had been carried out under his leadership. Indeed, so clear was the direction of travel that, in late 1944, Ellen Wilkinson was left concerned that the Left’s thunder had been stolen. The Coalition Government had passed legislation on Education and Family Allowances, and White Papers were being prepared on Social Insurance, the Health Services, and Full Employment which Led Ellen Wilkinson to ask what this would leave to be incorporated in the Labour Party’s General Election programme. Since the publication of the Beveridge Report, both main parties had, in varying degrees, embraced the idea of a welfare state. By 1951, there was little to distinguish between them in all of the areas incorporated in this concept. Its foundations lay, according to Roger Hermiston, “in the domination of British politics by the [progressive]

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personnel of the ‘Great Coalition’ formed in the 1940s, both during and after the war.”534 Churchill therefore cannot be denied credit for the part he played during this decade—a fact underscored by the carrying forward of the post-1945 welfare package by his second administration in 1951, and by the successor Conservative Governments of the 1960s.

534

Hermiston, All Behind You, 371–72.

CHAPTER NINE CONCLUSION

To summarise, as I hope previous chapters have demonstrated, the body of post-Second World War legislation, commonly regarded—mythically so, in my view—as creating the “Labour Party Welfare State”, was in reality a consolidation of social reform measures taken by all the parties who had held office since the late nineteenth century. This view was colourfully expressed by Peter Ackroyd in the following words: “In any sense that matters, the new welfare state was the lucky progeny of natural enemies.”535 The party which had been in power for the greater part of that period and, indeed, the only one which maintained its original political form and influence throughout its entire span, was the Conservative Party. After its post-1906 heyday, the Liberal Party never regained political dominance, particularly after the 1916 split between the National and Asquithian Liberals that undermined its political effectiveness. After six years as the Labour Representation Committee, the Labour Party emerged as a freestanding parliamentary element in 1906 but, despite two very short periods as a minority Government in the 1920s, it did not hold office with a majority until 1945. Nonetheless, as Chapter Four demonstrated, Labour exercised a considerable influence over the formulation of a post-war social reform agenda as part of the Second World War Coalition Government, even if the extent of that influence was forcefully challenged by its opponents. According to The Right Road for Britain, the Conservative Party’s 1949 Statement of Policy, “The [post-1945] Socialist Government…only completed the work which the Coalition had begun and in some cases had only to bring forward Bills already drawn up.”536 But however one is inclined to interpret these conflicting claims, it is incontestable that the Welfare State was erected on foundations established or promoted by Conservative administrations during their lengthy periods in office before the Second World War. The question then 535

P. Ackroyd, Innovation (London: Picador, Pan Macmillan, 2021), 250. The Right Road for Britain (London: Conservative and Unionist Central Office, 1949(.

536

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is how the Welfare State might have differed in shape and content if the Conservatives had been returned to power in 1945, after the experience of Coalition Government. Or did the Welfare State in the form that it took under Labour’s consolidation process from 1945 to 1951 satisfy what the Conservatives would have regarded as the natural outcome of their initiatives in the social reform field over previous years? The underlying, continuous impetus towards progressive developments by the Conservative Party in social policy areas derived from the Party’s belief in what, towards the end of the nineteenth century, came to be known as Tory Democracy. This itself derived from Disraeli’s concern for the “condition of the people”, and was later reflected in Lord Salisbury’s plans for the amelioration of the living conditions of the poor. In its original manifestations it embraced a wide range of improvements, most of which were taken for granted half a century later—the provision of people’s parks, libraries, wash houses, public sanitation, and so on. The importance of compulsory national insurance as the means of establishing and maintaining a minimum basic standard of life—the cornerstone of modern public welfare—was recognised by Lord Randolph Churchill as early as 1883. Accepting the huge steps taken by the 1906 Liberal Government in pursuit of this aspiration, it was in the years between the wars that major expansions in the social services took place. These developments were masterminded by the Conservative Neville Chamberlain, not without an eye for combatting increasing left-wing agitation for social improvements. Though there were serious checks on progress in the immediate period of economic crisis after the 1929–31 period of Labour Government, it was still possible to claim, as the Scottish Socialist Sir Patrick Dollan did in April 1939, that there was no country where the social services were so developed, so varied, and so well supported as they were in Britain. This led Ann Spokes to wonder “why the myth of ‘Tory misrule’ between the wars gathered such momentum that by the 1945 General Election even some Conservatives were ready to doubt that there had been such advances in social reform.” Spokes attributes this to socialist propaganda, which, she claims, started in the early years of the war (despite a supposed political truce), as well as to the fact that many first-time voters in 1945 would have been too young before the war to have formed any real understanding of the Conservative contribution.537 The Conservative philosophy on the social services has always been that one cannot help the weak without sufficient wealth; and that the Labour Party’s belief in the provision of universal indiscriminate benefits 537 Spokes,

“The Social Services”, 109.

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not only assumes a bottomless pit of resources, but is also wasteful and fails to help those in greatest need. The aim of Conservative policies in these areas has consistently been designed to improve the condition of the people without stifling initiative and enterprise (which has led the Labour Party to suggest with some frequency that once in power the ‘wicked Tories’ would slash benefits and drive the workers to the point of starvation). It was the difference between these two approaches which led to disagreements about how, and in what form, the Beveridge recommendations should be pursued and, as events turned out, this difference also helped to foster the nascent belief that the Labour Party had created the Welfare State de novo. How these differences played out during the consideration of the Beveridge report has been addressed in Chapters Four and Five. As the Thirties progressed, a number of Liberal industrialists and businessmen strayed into the Conservative Party as their own Party’s fortunes declined. This caused the growth of a feeling among some advanced Conservatives that the old Liberal laissez-faire concept was becoming too prominent a feature of the Tory Democracy tradition. As a result, the search began for a more coherent system lying between private enterprise and collectivism—a type of collectivism which would embrace social betterment. This eventually found expression in a book by Harold Macmillan, The Middle Way, published during the growing international crisis of 1938.538 Based on Macmillan’s experiences of the effects of industrialisation in his constituency of Stockton in the north of England during the Great Depression, the book was subtitled A Study of the Problem of Economic and Social Progress in a Free and Democratic Society. It presented politics as a tool to liberate society from the humiliation and restraints of unnecessary poverty. This would be facilitated by leaving the broad strategic control of the economy in the hands of the State, and its tactical operation and implementation in the hands of corporate management—all with cooperation between public and private ownership. It looked for a balance to be struck between the unfettered abuse of the free market and the intolerable restraints of the State which Macmillan feared would be imposed by Socialism. The Middle Way was, by and large, ignored by most, except for a small group of Conservative progressives who were concerned at what they regarded as the piecemeal nature of the Government’s economic and social reforms. These had not been underpinned, in their view, by any coherent overall philosophy, and they were therefore ready to embrace Macmillan’s vision. 538

Harold Macmillan, The Middle Way: A Study of the Problem of Economic and Social Progress in a Free and Democratic Society (London: Macmillan, 1938).

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This group of Conservative politicians became prominent in the years immediately preceding the war, and established themselves during the war as the chief advocates within the Party for social change. In March 1943, 41 of them formed the Tory Reform Committee to promote the case for the implementation of the Beveridge Report proposals. The Committee and its sub-committees published draft policies on a range of social issues such as workmen’s compensation, pensions and education, and two booklets outlining programmes for post-war reconstruction. The Committee’s plans for post-war “full” employment were Keynesian in tone. As Lord Hinchingbrooke, Chairman of the Reform Committee said, “Progressive Conservatives repudiate the concept of a self-help society, in which the whiplash of economic necessity is the only incentive to effort and the chimera of Want the only spur to enterprise.” In a pamphlet entitled Full Speed Ahead! Essays in Tory Reform, Hinchingbrooke argued that Baldwin’s Conservative Party had “forsaken the strategy of One Nation…and that subservience to big business in the 1920s and 1930s had caused grave social divisions and the party had to shake itself free.”539 Other members of the Committee spoke in similar terms, most notably Quintin Hogg.540 It would not have been surprising if some had regarded this as an example of the Conservatives condemning their previous policies out of their own mouths. Indeed, there was strong opposition, as the Beveridge Report made its way through Parliament, from many of their own Party, including from a counter-group calling itself the Progress Trust. The public and parliamentary pressure for the implementation of the report’s proposals, however, kept the Reform Committee alive and functioning until the general election of 1945 entirely changed the terms of the debate. A significantly prescient moment had arisen in 1944, when members of the Committee had joined Labour back-benchers in supporting an amendment, during the Second Reading of the Education Bill, that proposed equal pay for male and female teachers. Though the amendment was defeated on a vote of confidence the next day, the “rebellion” reminded the Party as a whole of the shift taking place in public attitudes in the country at large. The Education Bill had been introduced—against Churchill’s own instincts—by R.A. Butler, who was perhaps the most high-profile Tory reformer. Butler had attempted, not entirely successfully, to stimulate Tory radicalism from 1941 onwards. He was assisted in this matter by David Maxwell Fyfe, of the Conservative Post-War Problems Committee. It was not until after the

539

Lord Hinchingbrooke, Full Speed Ahead! Essays in Tory Reform (London: Simpkin Marshall Ltd., 1944). 540 Gamble, The Conservative Nation, 34.

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war that Butler really came into his own as a major—perhaps the dominant—shaper of future Conservative policies. The immediate post-war period saw the Conservatives, in a state of shock from their calamitous election defeat, barely offering any challenge to the new Labour Government’s programme of social legislation—the latter’s creation, as it came to be seen, of the Welfare State. The centrepiece of the legislation, the National Insurance Act of 1946—according to Peter Hennessy “the very incarnation of the principle of universality and embodiment of the idea of a ‘national minimum’ à la Webbs”—was full Beveridge and not the amended version that had been put forward in a White Paper during the last months of the Coalition. It went through almost on the nod. The Industrial Injuries Act, a revision of the Workmen’s Compensation Act of 1897, had already reached the Statute Book by a similar process. The passage of the National Health Service Bill was more contested, largely as a result of professional medical opposition which attracted some Conservative support. It was made more memorable, however, by Aneurin Bevan’s attack on the Tories as “lower than vermin”, a jibe which earned him their undying hatred.541 It is not too difficult to draw the conclusion that, in not seeking to defeat or substantially amend the Government’s legislation in these areas, the Conservatives were accepting the introduction of the Labour-fashioned Welfare State. They did so as something which they recognised was inevitable and, even more, as embracing the changes they themselves would have made if they had been elected. After all, they had acknowledged in The Right Road for Britain what needed to be done, and how they themselves had laid the foundations for it. “The Social Services are no longer in theory a form of poor relief”, the document stated, “[t]hey are a co-operative system of mutual aid and self-help provided by the whole nation and designed to give to all the basic minimum of security, of housing, of opportunity of employment and of living standards below which our duty to one another forbids us to permit anyone to fall.”542 In broad terms this could be taken as a description of the theory underpinning what the Labour Government actually introduced. Of course, the document could not avoid pointing out, with a good deal of justification, that it was the Conservatives who had paved the way for Labour’s practical consolidation of all these aims. This new [my italics] conception was further developed in 1944 in the legislation and White Papers of the Coalition Government with its majority 541 542

Harris, Attlee, 424. Conservative and Unionist Central Office.

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Chapter Nine of Conservative Ministers and the full approval of the Conservative majority in the House of Commons. They had passed the Education Act. They had set up the Beveridge Committee and had produced and approved White Papers based on it setting out the principles for the schemes of pensions, sickness and unemployment benefit, industrial injuries benefit and a national health scheme. They had laid the foundations of the post-war housing policy. The subsequent Conservative Government had passed the Family Allowances Act.543

The document, written for electioneering purposes, naturally ignores the various pressures and tensions, both intra- and inter-party, which typified the Coalition handling of all these issues. It is nevertheless a fact that without the Conservative Party’s sanction—given reluctantly by Churchill for reasons discussed in Chapter Eight—the Labour Party programme would have been at the very least long delayed, and perhaps even unachievable in its final form. It was in the unpromising atmosphere after the 1945 defeat that Butler launched various working groups and research bodies, with a view to reformulating Conservative policies, an exercise which saw a slow but pronounced shift towards acceptance of a “middle way” approach to policymaking. Hogg wrote to him at the time, urging the need for a new Tamworth manifesto (see Chapter Seven). Others, however, still unconvinced of the need for change of the sort that was being proposed, accused him of “milk and water socialism.”544 The first concrete product of Butler’s endeavours was the Industrial Charter, which in many ways was an abridged version of Macmillan’s 1938 book The Middle Way. Indicative of a changed future attitude, the Charter received overwhelming support at the 1947 Conservative Party Conference. It symbolised a “humanised capitalism”, emphasising the need for centralised direction of the economy to secure full employment by Keynesian means, coupled with comprehensive social security. It rejected the excesses of collectivism and the voraciousness of individualism in equal measure. The Charter was followed in time for the 1950 general election by the Party’s manifesto, The Right Road, drafted by Butler but finalised, in somewhat contentious circumstances, by Hogg. The policy paper, The Right Road for Britain, from which the manifesto derived, had been uncompromising about the role the Party had played in the creation of the welfare state. A key passage—in part of which one might detect the hand of Winston Churchill—read: 543 544

Conservative and Unionist Central Office. Howard, RAB: The Life of R.A. Butler, 257.

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Mainly during the Twentieth Century a new conception of Social Services has grown up and Britain has led the world in a vast experiment in social organisation. This has been the work of the Conservative and Liberal parties, mostly in fact of Parliaments with Conservative majorities…The Socialists in the last four years have carried out in a partisan spirit the plans prepared by the National Coalition Government with its large Conservative majority. They have no claim to any achievement of their own.545

The nature and effect of these changes of tone, and the part played by Butler in bringing them about, was reflected after the Conservatives regained office in 1951 by the adoption of the term “Butskellism”—a conflation of the names of Butler and Hugh Gaitskell, Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer before the 1951 election. This signified that Keynesianism had become the language of both main parties, though used with slightly different emphases.546 The role played by the Conservative Research Department amongst the forces driving the transformation of the Conservative Party should not be overlooked. In a way it replaced in a much more disciplined fashion the work done by the Tory Reform Committee, which ceased to function in 1946. First established by Baldwin in 1929 but essentially Neville Chamberlain’s brainchild, the CRD was inactive during the war. It was restored to life in 1945, with Butler as Chairman. During his tenure of that office, Butler recruited a group of ex-servicemen, all of whom shared his progressive instincts. Foremost among them were Iain Mcleod, Reginald Maudling, and Enoch Powell, all destined to become high-profile professional politicians. The other body which assisted policy-making in a different way, was the Conservative Political Centre. Constituted in December 1945, its principal responsibility was the administration of the “two-way movement of ideas” which garnered responses to questions sent to constituency parties. These were assembled as memoranda, and submitted to Butler’s Advisory Committee on Policy and Political Education, the successor to his wartime Post-War Problems Committee. Butler was clearly a ubiquitous figure in all areas of policy-making. In offering my final thoughts about the extent to which the Conservative Party contributed to the emergence of a welfare state, I want to re-examine, for a moment, the distinction between consensus and compromise which I have come to believe, as I have compiled this book, is misleading. Instead of “consensus” and “compromise”, I want to focus on two other ‘c’ words—change and continuity. 545 546

Conservative and Unionist Central Office. Eccleshall, English Conservatism, 179–87.

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The immediate post-war years ushered in what many have called a social revolution, one which would almost certainly have been different to some degree if it had been introduced by the Conservative Party. Given the nature of the commitments made by both Coalition parties post-Beveridge, however, major change would have been unavoidable. What led subsequent commentators, therefore, to use the language of revolution to describe the nature of the changes which the Attlee Government pushed through? I think this can be explained by the exaggerated force of the arguments mustered by the Labour Party, almost from the very start of the war, about the need to avoid a return to pre-war conditions under a post-war Tory Government, and even more so by the utter shock of the seismic victory won by the Labour Party at the 1945 election. At the time, and for some time thereafter, this dramatic reversal of electoral fortunes seemed to betoken an equally dramatic shift in the overall political landscape of the country. Looking back on the period after 1951, however—and bearing in mind the nature of the 1950 election when it was generally accepted, on the basis of their manifestos, that there was little to choose between the parties in policy terms—it is not difficult to conclude that subsequent portrayals of the immediate post-war situation were heavily over-dramatised. Taking a rather longer view of how change is embraced by the Conservative Party allows for a different conclusion. Given the enormous pressures for change arising from two world wars, industrial development, and the growth of social consciousness reflected by the emergence of leftwing political parties, I would argue that what happened to the Conservative Party between the end of the nineteenth century and 1951 is a classic example of how the Party has always adapted to change. The period under review may have been uncustomarily long and the events occurring within it highly unusual, but considered from the vantage point of 1951, it represents a perfect, though heightened, example of the Burkean approach which underpins Conservative attitudes to change. It is also a fact that change within the Party usually has to come about after the views of forward-looking minorities have gained sufficient force and support to overcome often deep-seated internal opposition. On the face of it, “change” and “continuity” are antithetical concepts. One of the principal features of the change that took place in the Conservative Party’s position on social policy in the first half of the twentieth century was—as far as war and the Great Depression permitted— its dedication to continuous improvement in the condition of the people. This is further attested by the fact that the embryonic shape of a welfare state was already apparent immediately before the outbreak of hostilities in 1939. The Party had been in office, or in power, for all but three and a half

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years of the entire period between the two world wars and had, as circumstances allowed, effected improvements in every area of domestic politics. Churchill had been on the Liberal benches when he worked with Lloyd George on the formulation of the 1906 Liberal Government’s national insurance legislation and persisted, in very difficult circumstances, in attempts to build on the pre-war programme once the First World War had ended, but he rejoined the Conservative Party in 1922 as the divided Liberals started to slip into decline. As Chancellor, Churchill supported Chamberlain’s social reform programme during the latter’s productive spell as Minister Health from 1924 to 1929. From then on, however, he became increasingly concerned with international affairs, but Chamberlain’s concern for social reform never faltered, even after his own appointment as Chancellor. Churchill himself never regarded domestic concerns as taking precedence over international affairs, an attitude informed not only by his warrior instinct but also by his enduring antipathy towards the possibility of socialistic or Utopian leaps into the new collective world envisaged by the Labour Party and, to a lesser degree, by Conservative progressives. Nevertheless, he did authorise the preparation of the Beveridge Report— without realising, along with many others, how revolutionary it would turn out to be—as well as the subsequent attempts to turn its recommendations into acceptable legislative proposals via a series of White Papers. As Churchill said in a letter to Attlee about the possible prolongation of the Coalition, the Coalition would “continue to press on with social reform and would do [its] utmost to implement the proposals for social security contained in the White Papers...laid before Parliament.” In similar fashion, in the debate on the King’s Speech on 29 November 1944, at the zenith of Coalition co-operation on social reform, Churchill had cast his mind forward to the aftermath of the coming election when he told MPs: There is one thing that is quite certain; all the leading men in both the principal parties...are pledged and committed to this great mass of social legislation, and I cannot conceive that whatever may be the complexion of the new House, they will personally fail to make good their promises and commitments to the people.547

And indeed he personally committed himself in public speeches to the provision of social cover “from the cradle to the grave”, although in terms which left open exactly how that would be brought about. 547

Hansard, HC Deb. 29 November 1944, 5th ser. vol. 406, col. 35.

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While pressure for full implementation of Beveridge came principally from the Labour Party, it would have been difficult for the Conservatives, if they had been elected in 1945, to avoid carrying the White Paper National Insurance and Health Service proposals into law, in one form or another. Conversely, the wartime Conservative-led Coalition had certainly provided the foundation for the social welfare measures introduced by the Labour Government of 1945–1951. The Conservatives’ gradual accommodation to Labour’s welfare programme during those six years of Opposition was largely reflected in their policy pronouncements and rendered it unnecessary for them to devise new and distinctive social reform policies. By the time of its election victory in 1951 the Party could, with some justification, claim to have played a major role in creating a situation which had enabled the transformation of the condition of the people. All of this leads me to the inescapable conclusion that the greater part of the credit for the creation of a welfare state, if not the precise form it took after the 1945 election, should go to the Conservative Party for its consistent responses to social needs over the whole of the first half of the twentieth century.

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INDEX A Acts of Parliament Unemployed Workmen’s Act 1903, 16, 35 Old Age Pensions Act 1908, 7, 206 Labour Exchanges Act 1909, 7 n.10(b) National Insurance Acts 1911 and 1946, 7, 8 n.10(c–d), 18, 27–28, 186–87, 206; 225 Prolongation of Insurance Acts 1921–1926, 28, 117 Housing Acts 1923, 1924, 1930, and 1935, 47, 50, 55, 65–66, 72 Widows, Orphans and Old Age Pensions Act 1925, 50–52 Rating and Valuation Act 1925, 52–54 Trade Disputes Act 1927, 70, 140 National Health Insurance Act 1928, 29 Local Government Act 1929, 64 Abnormal Importations Act 1931, 62 Import Duties Act 1932, 62 National Health Insurance Contributory Pensions Act 1932, 64 Special Measures Act 1934, 63 Midwives Act 1936, 64 Special Areas (Amendment) Act 1937, 63, 71 Holidays with Pay Act 1938, 68 Education Act 1944, 89–92, 105 Family Allowances Act 1945, 96, 105, 109–110

National Health Service Act 1946, 186–90 Acland, Sir Richard, 119 Adam, Sir Ronald, 131 Addison, Christopher, Viscount, 19, 26 Alexander, A.V., 77 Amery, Leo, 37, 86, 121, 122 Anderson, Sir John, 51, 85, 101, 109, 168 Army Bureau of Current Affairs (ABCA), 131–32 Asquith, H.H., 6, 7, 17, 19, 20–22, 25, 33–34, 74, 204, 205 Assheton, Ralph, 100, 108, 124, 127–28, 142, 145, 162, 188, 198 Astor, Nancy, 20 n.40, 160 Astor, W.W., 117, 144, 185–86 Attlee, Clement Leader of Labour Party, 1935– 55, 78 Deputy Leader Coalition Government, 1942–45, 81– 86, 100, 115, 118–21, 126– 130, 142, 146–49, 155 Prime Minister, 1945–50 and 1950–51, 162, 172, 193, 196, 215, 216–19, 228 B Bacon, Alice, 86 Balfour, A.J., 6, 7, 14, 16, 23, 55, 69, 126 Baldwin, Stanley, 30, 32, 36, 39, 42–45, 48, 51, 59, 60, 68–74, 124–25, 166, 175, 178, 203–4 Beaverbrook, Lord, 42, 59 n.133, 81, 83–84, 107, 111, 116–120, 121 n.277, 125–32, 145–47, 173

242

Index

Bevan, Aneurin, 86, 99, 103, 108, 162, 186–90, 225 Bell, Ronald, 120 n.274 Beveridge, Sir William, 5, 7 n.10(b), 27, 73, 82, 93–95, 113, 114 Beveridge Report 1942, 96–113, 133–37, 153–54, 160–65, 186–90, 214–19, 230 Bevin, Ernest, 84–86, 93–94, 101, 103, 106, 118, 129, 146, 153, 161, 199 Birkenhead, Lord, 23, 43–44 Boer War, 4, 13, 14 n.25, 17, 26, 115 Bonar Law, Andrew, 15–16, 21, 22– 23, 28, 31, 33, 42, 47, 70, 207 Booth, Charles, 17 Boothby, Robert, 116, 212 Bracken, Brendan, 85, 96, 120, 122, 129, 146, 214 Bridges, Sir Edward, 108, 162, 168 Brooke, Henry, 87 Birrell, Augustine, 6 Butler, R.A., 2, 80, 83, 85, 88–91, 105, 116, 128–33, 148, 154, 172–75, 183–84, 187, 193–97, 217–219, 224 (see also Tory Reform Committee, and The Right Road for Britain, 1949)

Cherwell, Lord, 85, 136 Churchill, Lord Randolph, 44, 170, 185, 202, 203, 222 Churchill, Randolph S., 121 n.277 Churchill, Winston, 9, 19, 32, 35, 44, 73, 90, 201–220 Elected MP, 1900, 202 Defects to Liberal Party 1904, 9, 35 Rejoins Conservative Party 1922, 36 Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1924–29, 35, 44–58 India, 62 Prime Minister, 1940–45, 39, 77, 82, 119 Caretaker Government 1945, 106, 112, 119, 134 Leader of the Opposition, 1945– 51, 165–200 Colville, Sir John, 115, 128 Common Wealth Party, 96, 119, 143 Conservative Research Department (CRD) 16, 48, 56–57, 67, 87, 131, 168, 172, 182, 193, 199, 227 Cripps, Sir Stafford, 80–81, 190, 192, 199 Crookshank, Harry, 179 Curzon, Lord, 42

C Campbell-Bannerman, Henry, 17 Carlton Club meeting, 1922, 30–31, 210 Chamberlain, Austen, 15, 22–23, 28, 30 n.63, 31, 43, 44 n.101, 209 Chamberlain, Joseph, 13, 43–44, 70, 170, 203 Chamberlain, Neville, 3, 36–41, 45– 53, 56–57, 61–63, 67, 70, 75– 77, 87, 92, 213–14, 222, 227 Appeasement, 37, 40, 70, 77, 80, 125, 214

D Dalton, Hugh, 77–78, 83, 96, 100, 146, 153, 192, 215 Davidson, J.C.C., 42, 44 n.101, 57 Disraeli, Benjamin, 170, 175, 178 n.431, 185, 202, 212, 222 Tory Democracy, 1, 88, 202, 222 Dollan, Sir Patrick, 72, 222 E Eccles, David, 172 n.410, 184

The Conservative Party and the Creation of the Welfare State Eden, Anthony, 81, 121, 149, 168– 69, 172 n.410, 173, 182, 193, 199 Edward VII, King, 7 n.9 Edward VIII, King, 68, 214 Election Manifestos 1945, 126, 131, 134 ‘Let us Face the Future’— Labour Party Manifesto 1945, 135, 138–141, 180 ‘Mr Churchill’s Declaration of Policy to the Electors’— Conservative Party Manifesto 1945, 134–38, 180 F Fabian Society, 11, 18, 92, 98, 131 Freeman, Peter, 120 n.274 G General Elections January 1906, 6, 11, 14–16, 17 n.34, 170 January 1910, 7 n.9, 8, 16 December 1910, 7 n.9, 16, 18 December 1918, 5, 19, 20, 22 n.43, 25, 207 November 1922, 33, 42 December 1923, 43, 48, 211 October 1924, 43, 48 May 1929, 49, 55–56 October 1931, 60–62, 71 November 1935, 67, 77 July 1945, 40–41, 70–71, 74, 86, 112, 114, 115–150, 158, 166, 168, 171–72, 222, 228 February 1950, 165, 173, 181– 85, 192, 196, 228 October 1951, 194–97, 200, 218, 230 General Strike 1926, 25, 38, 45, 70, 120, 140, 213 George V, King, 7 n.9, 22 n.43, 31, 42, 59 George VI, King, 115

243

Goebbels, Josef, 80 Gollancz, Victor, 125 Greenwood, Arthur, 55, 78, 80, 85– 86, 93–94, 100, 101 n.234 Griffiths, James, 101–102, 186–87 H Haldane, Lord, 11 Halifax, Lord (formerly Lord Irwin), 39, 61, 77 ‘Haxey, Simon’, 125 Hayek, Friedrich A. von, The Road to Serfdom, 127–28, 131, 153– 54, 170, 198–200 Hinchingbrooke, Lord, 88, 132–33, 224 Hitler, Adolf, 37–38, 125, 189, 219 Hogg, Quintin (Lord Hailsham), 88, 128, 131–33, 177–78, 183–84, 224, 226 (see also The Right Road for Britain, 1949) Hollis, Christopher, 116 Hopkinson, Henry, 182 I Isaacs, George, 191–92 J Jones, Aubrey, 124, 186 K Keynes, John Maynard, 2, 59 n.133, 80, 92–93, 104, 106–8, 161–62, 173, 181, 192–93, 200, 211–13, 224, 226–27 L Labour Party Constitution 1918, 34 Laski, Harold, 24, 78, 86–87, 100, 125, 127–31, 215 Left Book Club, 125 Lloyd George, David, 6, 7 n.9, 11, 18–24, 27–32, 201, 205–10 People’s Budget 1909, 6–8, 18, 31, 160, 206

244 Labour Exchanges, 7, 8, 15, 29 National Insurance Act 1911, 7, 8 n.10(c), 15, 18, 27, 28 Coupon Election 1918, 19–21, 23, 60, 126, 207 Lyttleton, Oliver, 85, 169, 172 M MacDonald, Malcolm, 94 MacDonald, Ramsay, 40 n.93, 43, 55, 58, 59–62, 67, 69, 213 Macmillan, Harold, 67, 89, 122, 128, 169, 172, 173, 176, 184, 193, 201 The Middle Way, 128, 172 n.410, 173, 223, 226 Martin, Kingsley, 125 Masterman, Charles, 10, 206 Maxton, James, 79 Maxwell Fyfe, David, 87 Macleod, Iain, 2, 188, 199, 202 Maudling, Reginald, 124, 168, 227 Meade, James, 104, 107 Milner, Lord, 14 Molson, Hugh, 132 Morrison, Herbert, 77–78, 85, 103, 127, 128, 139, 146, 189 Mosley, Oswald, 48, 59 Mosley Memorandum, 59 n.133 N New Liberalism, 8–10, 31, 152 O Orwell, George, 125 P People’s Budget 1909, 6–8, 18, 31, 160, 206 Pethick-Lawrence, F.W., 78 Poole, Oliver, 184 Poor Law, 7 n.10(a), 9, 11–13, 16– 17, 27, 29, 34, 45, 49–54, 64– 65, 70, 72, 187 Powell, Enoch, 227 Priestley, J.B., 125

Index

R Rathbone, Eleanor, 110, 160, 214 Reconstruction Committees 1917 and 1943, 19–20, 83, 111, 219 Robbins, Lionel, 104 Rosebery, Lord, 10, 17 Rothermere, Lord, 27, 59 n.133 Rowntree, Seebohm, 17, 201, 205, 214 Royal Commission on the Poor Laws 1905, 12–13 Russian Revolution 1917, 25 S Sackville-West, Vita, 121 Salisbury, Lord, 3, 30, 68, 115, 117, 169, 199, 202, 206, 222 Samuel, Herbert, 10, 59 n.134, 61 Shinwell, Emmanuel, 86–87, 101 Smith, F.E. (Lord Birkenhead), 23, 28, 43, 44 n.101 Snowden, Philip, 51–52, 59–61 Stalin, Marshall Josef, 80, 123, 125, 172 Steel-Maitland, Arthur, 31 Strachey, John, 125 Stuart, James, 91, 121, 128, 169, 182 Summerskill, Edith, 160 T Thatcher, Margaret, 156, 211 Thatcherism, 2, 200 The Right Road for Britain 1949, 184–85, 193, 195, 221, 225–7 Thorneycroft, Peter, 88, 132 Tory Reform Committee, 74, 87–88, 101, 132–34, 141, 154, 167 n.394, 185, 193, 197, 216, 217, 224, 227 Truman, President Harry S., 169, 172 U Uthwatt Report, 134

The Conservative Party and the Creation of the Welfare State W Webb, Beatrice, 13, 17, 18, 35, 54, 92, 187, 206, 215, 225 Webb, Sydney, 17, 35, 54, 187, 225 Wheatley, John, 50, 65 White Papers White Paper on Social Insurance 1944, 109, 113, 160–63, 219, 226 White Paper on Employment Policy 1944, 96, 105–8, 141, 161–63, 190-91, 219, 226

245

White Paper on a National Health Service 1944 (Willink White Paper), 96, 105, 110–12, 162–63, 219, 226 Wigg, George, 131 Willink, Henry, 80, 111–12, 163, 189 Wood, Kingsley, 67, 91, 94, 101, 104, 216 Woolf, Leonard, 92 Woolton, Lord, 82–84, 159, 181, 183–84, 194–96, 216 Wooton, Barbara, 105